The need for Grace

Well, good morning. Yeah, we are in the book of

John. You can grab your Bible if you

have it with you. We're going to be in John

John 3 · chapter mention

chapter 3. At first we are doing a series

called Encounters with Jesus and today we're actually going to

look at 2 encounters, the one in chapter 3, the other in chapter

4. And the reason why I want to put

the two together is I really believe that John actually put

them back-to-back for a reason. Because there are two people on

the polar opposite side of the spiritual spectrum, for a lack

of a better word. On one side you've got

Nicodemus, the Pharisee. On the other side you've got the

Samaritan woman and all the baggage that comes with being a

Samaritan. So you've got Nicodemus.

He's at the height of his religious reputation.

He's the kind of guy that has a familiar Bible for every day of

the week, and he brings it with him to church.

He calls your brother. He says Amen, randomly, Amen.

And he's not sure if he's going to come back next week because

he's heard that Oscar comes to this church, and he's a little

bit disturbed by the fact that we were baptizing black people.

How are we going there this morning?

On the outside, he looks squeaky clean, but on the inside, he's a

whitewashed tomb, as Jesus would call him.

Yeah. And Giovanni, I mean, how many

more tattoos, for reals? You know?

Like, seriously, you're running out of face space.

Gee. And his religious lens does not

allow him to witness one of the most beautiful moments that I've

seen in many, many years, Giovanni baptizing.

And you just know the evidence of grace that you see there.

But Nicodemus doesn't see that. He sees Nico coming to church in

shorts. And then on the other side of

the spectrum, we're going to be looking at the Samaritan woman

baggage. She's been married and divorced

and married again and divorced and married again and again and

again and divorced again and again and again.

And now she's living with a man who doesn't even think she's

worth the commitment. And we're going to take a look

at this because both of these have an encounter with the grace

of God and they are never the same again.

And it doesn't matter where you fall on the spectrum, if you

have an encounter with Jesus this morning, you will never be

the same again. So let's take a look.

Let's jump straight in for Tom's sake.

John chapter 3 and verse one says the following.

John 3 · chapter mention

Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus, who was a

member of the Jewish ruling council.

If you're new to scripture, if you're new to this idea of a

Pharisee, just some back story there.

The Pharisees actually started with noble intent.

So during the time of of Israel's history, they were

pretty much sacked. They were taken into exile.

And while they were now among foreign people in foreign lands,

the Pharisees arose to basically look after the people of God.

They had three mandates. The first one was they were to

establish synagogues so that the people scattered across the

empire could meet and hang with one another.

And you know, the brethren could dwell together and then they had

to look after scriptures. This is actually where the the

Hebrew Old Testament was put together was because of the

Pharisees gathering the scriptures of God and then the

the all social norms like how do we live outside of our lands

among Barbarians and pagans? And so this is what the

Pharisees were meant to do. The problem was that there were

self appointed policemen and you add flesh to that mandate and

you get very religious, very self-righteous, performance

driven, externally beautiful, internally dead dry bones, all

about academics and what you know and the scriptures.

You can quote all the information you need, but none

of the transformation. And so here we have dear old

Nicodemus who comes to Jesus and up until then that has been the

win. And then he encounters Jesus

says no one has ever spoken and taught like Jesus speaks and

teachers. So verse 2, Nicodemus came to

Jesus at night and said, Rabbi, we know that you're a teacher

who has come from God for no one could perform the signs you're

doing if God were not with him. He's blowing like proper smoke

right here. And Jesus just cuts to the

chase. He says in verse 3 very truly.

I tell you now that's that's some of your Bibles might say

truly, truly or verily, verily, it's it's it actually was what a

judge would say when he hit that gavel.

Hear ye. Yeah, yeah, he says very truly.

I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless you are

born again. And Nicodemus starts to twitch

because I mean, he has you. You give me a law, I will keep

it. You give me a heel, I will take

charge of it. But now you're telling me that

none of that counts for nothing and actually you're telling me I

need to do something absolutely impossible, be born again.

How? He says, how can someone be born

when they're old? Surely not Lord, he's saying,

actually highlighted in my Bible the amount of exclamation Marks

and question marks with Nicodemus and Jesus that I like.

There's more there than everything running up in the

book of John till now. He's spinning out and Jesus

doesn't let him breathe. He dives straight for the

jugular. He says in verse 5, very truly,

hear ye, hear ye. I tell you, no one can enter the

Kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the spirit.

No one. He's like, can we not just talk

about my pedigree? You have to come to my office.

I want to show you my certificates.

You know, I've done the book of John.

Yeah. And I've highlighted every time

it says believe. And I've written every time

Stephen speaks about the original Greek on this.

Surely that counts for summing. Surely if I outweigh all my bad

with a whole bunch of good, that counts for summing.

And Jesus is no, no one, no one. So verse 9 he says, how can this

be? I don't know if you've ever had

this moment, an encounter with Jesus or a situation where, you

know, you've climbed up that run only to get to the top and you

realize that the ladder was leaning against the wrong wall.

Nicodemus is having this experience.

I've had this experience, and it came through the silly little

book. Sandy wanted references.

This is the reference, Sandy. Tim Keller's The Prodigal God.

So I was told it's a great book. It's about the prodigal son.

And I'm thinking like, yeah, I mean, I'm surely most of us

could probably quoted verbatim, right?

You know, You know about him wanting his inheritance, wishing

his father dead, squandering it all on licentious living,

prostitutes, gambling, drugs and alcohol.

We know that, right? But this book lends a whole lot

more on the older brother, which I didn't even know was in the

story. There's, I mean, he has issues

and you know, the father goes out to him.

For me, the prodigal son is all about the prodigal younger

brother. And so reading through this and

he says the following. He says this.

He says the older brother is in a more spiritually desperate

condition than the younger brother.

Now I'm going like Nicodemus. Surely not, Lord, how can this

be? The older brother is in a more

spiritually precarious condition than the younger brother.

I mean, the younger brother has spent money on prostitutes.

The older brother like, like we grew up saying in our house, no

alcohol has crossed these lips. That's the older brother.

The prostitutes have crossed his lips.

How could he be in a better spiritual condition?

And he says, well, notice right at the very end, the younger

brother comes back. He returns, he's given the robe

of righteousness, the signet ring in the shoes of a son, and

he's taken in the older brothers left outside.

I'm going. Surely not Lord.

And I started seeing the older brother in me, joyless, duty

driven, constantly comparing cynical, critical, always the

negative bubbling to the surface.

And then he said this. And this is where it absolutely

finished me. He said he never missed a life

group. He never missed a Sunday.

He was doing everything he had to do.

But the one thing he lets was the assurance of the father's

love for him, because he didn't have that.

It drove everything he tried desperately to perform enough to

earn the father's love. And this is what Nicodemus is

busy doing. This is what the religious and

the legalistic are trying to do. We're trying to earn the love of

the Father. We don't actually realize that

it's given as a gift. I heard a crazy story a few

years ago. I don't know if you know the

lady, Lisa Harper, she's in the 60s now.

She's still single. And I heard the story when she

was in her mid 30s and she was struggling, struggling with

being signal, single signal. My caffeine just wore out right

there. So she was struggling.

And then there was this guy who seemed to show some interest.

And so she couldn't believe it when she got for the very first

time. She was deep in her 30s.

She got her first invitation to a Valentine's evening dinner and

he arrived here. She said she realized he was a

little nervous as well because she had taken 1/2 day to bath

and almond milk. And you know the MUR of the

hills of Everest, you know, but she got he got to the door.

She's like good smelling through the door, his aftershave, you

know. So the his two very nervous mid

30 somethings are going out for a dates.

It's her very first one. He's he's been around a bit, but

she's but still single. And she's quite surprised that

he's still single because he was quite cute apparently.

And so they have a 7 course meal and between the meal and

desserts, the maid to D arrives with this beautiful white box

with a red ribbon and puts it on the table in front of her.

And on it's just underneath the ribbon is emblazoned on this

box, the word Grace. And the word grace is

referencing a store, a boutique store that she's only ever

walked past because like the cheap stuff in there starts at

$1000. And he has gotten her something

from Grace and she can't wait because she knows he's the 1:00

ask me. I'm saying yes.

So he says, open it. And so she takes the ribbon off

and she opens the lid and it's this beautiful black number and

she's thinking like, get on your knee, boy, get on your knee.

I'm yours. But she does what every woman

does, quickly glances at the size and realizes this dress

like 3 or 4 sizes too small. In her words, ladies.

In her words. She says she is built a little

low to the ground, her words, and the dress was designed for a

giraffe, built in condescension here.

But it's OK. It's brand new, still in the

box. She can take it back on on the

Monday and get it exchanged. And he says to her, I'd love to

see you wearing it. And so she is like, hey, ask me

out on another date and I'll do you the pleasure.

No, no, no, no, go put it on now.

Not really. You don't know.

Please go. So Ben, she's like, I'm sorry,

it's it's a size too small. And he leans over and he takes

her hand. He says, my girlie, I know

exactly what size dress you wear.

I had someone go into the the change rooms while we were

playing tennis and just make sure I got the size right.

And he says this and I'm reading his words, says here's the deal.

If you lose enough weight to fit into that dress, I'm convinced

that I could fall in love with you.

Ladies, be still. I want to.

I want to talk to the dads. Imagine some cowboy says that to

your daughter. I don't know about you.

I'm from the bluff. I'm not scared to go back to

prison. You know what I'm saying?

It's like, let me. Yeah, me and Giovanni, I was

like, we are coming for you, cowboy.

Put a pin in this and hear me out.

When you and I approach our Heavenly Father the way

Nicodemus approached Jesus and scriptures and God, when you and

I are religious and legalistic and when we behave like a

Pharisee, what we are saying, God, you are just like that

chop. We are saying that the God who

gave his Son to die on our behalf is like that cowboy who

leans across the table and says to you, if you just lose enough

weight, if you just do enough, if you just quit smoking, if you

just put your your divorce back together again, if you just

confess to the I'm convinced I could love you.

Have you ever seen a more blasphemous approach to the love

of God? Yet we take it.

We adopt it, we live by it, we celebrate it, and we expect

others to conform to it. Forget about grace, man, God is

an absolute chop and so because of that, because that is in the

heart of Nicodemus, because it is in our heart, Jesus reaches

for the upper shelf, top shelf scripture and he lays on him.

John 316 for God so loves you Nicodemus.

He doesn't say fits into the dress.

He gives his one and only son that whoever behaves, whoever

believes so not perish, but have eternal life.

For God didn't send his son to the world to condemn the world

one size smaller. Do harder, try harder, get

better, clean up your ACT. No, God didn't send his son to

the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through

him. And here stands Nicodemus and

says, how can that be? But he receives it because right

at the very end in Jordan chapter 19, we come across

Nicodemus. This guy came to Jesus in the

night. Again, Joseph of Arimathea and

Nicodemus go to pilot and ask, since Jesus has been crucified

also, they can take the body down.

They embalm him. He spends 10s of thousands of

rands on embalming Jesus and putting him in the tomb while

the rest of the disciples have hit for the hills.

He's standing there in broad daylight saying this man, this

man came from me. I put my trust in him.

And Nicodemus stands as the poster child of an older brother

who slowly learns grace because an encounter with Jesus will

never leave you the same. And good old John doesn't give

us a second to breathe before we jump straight into John chapter

John 4 · chapter mention

4. And we come face to face with

the Samaritan woman. Now it actually says there that

Jesus had to go his he had to go through Samaria, which is

something that Jews didn't do. Actually the I think it's the

King James Version said like he had must must needs.

There's like my sight has hit on going through Samaria.

And if you understand the back story to Samaria, you realize

well that that is so shocking when funny enough, at the same

time when the Pharisees were being formed in the history of

Israel, the Samaritans were also coming forth in the history of

Israel. Apparently when the northern

kingdoms descended on Israel and wiped them out to the Assyrians

were particularly cruel and wicked and they had a specific

cruelty that they kept for the Jews.

See, they knew that the Jews were really precious on their

lineage, you know, son of so and so begat so and so begat.

They wanted to make sure that their lineage was perfectly

pure. Scripture told them they weren't

to marry outside of the people of God.

And actually, it was best if you could keep it within your tribe.

So what the Assyrians did was they grabbed a whole bunch of

ladies, took them home, raped them.

And when they fell pregnant, they sent them back, saw their

husbands killed, maybe the children killed, taken out of

their land, abused, and then come back pregnant with a Syrian

offspring. And so the Jews, because they

were Nicodemus through and through, disassociated

themselves from them and they became the Samaritans.

So now they, this is the most abused, rejected.

How can God let this happen to us people?

And in the middle of that is one who particularly is rejected by

those who are rejected. A Samaritan woman, married and

divorced five times. She seems to be chewed up and

spat out by her own rejected people, rejected twice over.

And that is the reason why she's at this well, going to the well

in broad daylight, because that's when no one else should

be there. But instead she comes face to

face with a man who says she is the very one I must find.

Verse 7, when a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus just

happened to be at the well. He said to her, will you give me

a drink? His disciples had gone into the

town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him,

you are a Jew and I'm a Samaritan woman.

How can you ask me for a drink? For Jews do not associate with

Samaritans the understatement of Scripture.

So for time's sake, there's a lot going on here.

She says, you're a Jew. I'm a Samaritan.

Yeah, we shouldn't even be talking.

And you asking me from for water.

And Jesus says, if you knew who I was, you would ask me for

water and I'd give you a living water and you'd never be thirsty

again. And she's like, you don't even

have a bucket. And Jesus says, can you please

go and get your husband? And she says, I don't have a

husband. And Jesus says, I know you've

had five. The one you're staying with is

not your husband. And she says, Oh well done,

you're a prophet. So but one day a Messiah will

come and he'll put you in your place.

And Jesus says in verse 26, I the one speaking to you am he?

Verse 28 immediately leaving her water jar, the woman went back

to the town and said to the people, come see a man who's

told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?

Verse 39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him

because of the woman's testimony.

He told me everything I'd ever did.

So when the Samaritan came to him, they urged him to stay with

him and he stayed 2 days. And because of his words, many

more became believers. And I'm looking at, I'm

thinking, how does this happen? How do you go from rare to

revival? Yeah.

I'm like, what's the secret sauce?

Maybe you live with them. Wow.

I'm going. There must be something here.

She is properly feisty, understandably so.

She's just assuming she's going to be judged, looked down on.

And then he knows about the five men and the 6th one who doesn't

even think she's worth committing to.

She's defensive who properly prickly and then revival and so

I looked and I read and I looked and I read and I think this is

what's happening. Take a look at verse 27.

Just then as disciples returned and were surprised to find him

talking with a woman. I underlined talking in my Bible

because my NIV in chapter 3 it says Jesus teaches Nicodemus and

in chapter 4 the heading is Jesus talks to Samaritan.

So I think they've seen what I'm seeing here talking.

And then in verse 41 it says, and because of His words, many

more became believers talking words.

Remember how John 11 begins? In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was God, and the Word was with God.

Here is this living Word of God sowing His Word into that dark

wilderness of His soul. I don't know if you know this,

but in 2011 with Fukushima, with a nuclear disaster, if you see

an aerial view, which they apparently have blocked Google

from, you just see this wilderness around because

nothing grows where there's nuclear fallout.

And the way that they are sorting that out is with these

guys. They're called Chequers 6060,

and they had a whole bunch of sunflower seeds delivered.

It's called phyto remediation. And so they've got a whole bunch

of sunflower seeds that they are just sowing in this nuclear

wasteland around Fukushima. Because apparently inside these

tiny little things that you can't even see on a camera.

But even if I hold it up to my picture inside one of these, God

has created a hyper accumulator. And so they've sown 10,000 of

these seeds around Fukushima in this wasteland that nothing

grows, but the sunflower seeds somehow grows and not only

grows, but it takes the contaminants out of the soil and

stores it in the roots and in the stalk and in the leaves.

And then once it's grown and it's beautiful, you can actually

Google and see the photos, It's just sunflower seeds, sunflowers

all over this barren wilderness. And once they've grown, they

harvest it and they take that nuclear radiation and the all

the whatever isotopes that are inside the plant and they go and

they get rid of it and they plant some more seeds and they

plant some more seeds. And I really believe that this

is what Jesus is doing. He's wading into the wilderness

of her life, sowing seeds and the darkness and the brokenness

of her heart. And as he speaks, it's like that

darkness is drawn out, darkness is drawn A hopelessness,

rejection just drawn out of her. And so if you are anything like

the Samaritan woman this morning, I want to do something

of that today. I want to sow some seeds.

I want to show you what Jesus did and encourage you to do

likewise so that you can have an encounter and allow him to sow

some of those seeds into your heart.

Like one of them that you can use is Romans 55.

It says we're not put to shame. Jesus didn't go to her and we're

not put to shame. Instead, God's love is poured

into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

Maybe that's the seed that you can sow into your heart, your

heart of shame. God wants to pour out his love

into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

Maybe you can write it on your mirror.

You can use your wife's lipstick and write it on there.

Actually, I heard Francis Chan talk about this.

I don't know if you know the back story to Francis Chamber.

When he was here recently, he mentioned so when he was born,

his mom died giving birth to him, and his dad utterly

rejected him, hated him for killing his wife.

And so as a young boy, he was kicked out.

He was sent back home, back to his grandparents in China.

And the grandparents were properly elderly.

And so as soon as he got to be of age where he was running

ragged in these tiny little apartments, they sent him to his

aunt. And his aunt wanted nothing to

do with him, sent him back to the father.

And he talks about a moment where his dad has tied him to a

tree. He's gone and broken off the

branch and he's just beating him out of sheer anger and

frustration for Francis Chan. And he says this, He says, how

would you take a man like that, a young man like that, and

impart the life and hope and purposes of God into that life,

into that wilderness? And he says at the age of 15, he

came across this verse. He says that the love God, God's

love is poured into hearts through the Holy Spirit.

But he says this, He said what God did in his heart at the age

of 15, it's still roaring in him at the age of 57.

What God did in the heart of that Samaritan woman at maybe

also 50 is roaring out of Scripture thousands of years

later. Such is the power.

I mean, if you think of sunflower seed is some power.

The living Word of God has the power to set you free, but it

needs planting and watering and tending, allowing the Scripture

to renew your mind, renew your heart, renew your soul.

Here's another who I've been planting lots of this one of

late. Isaiah 53 verse 6 says we all,

Isaiah 53:6

like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own

way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

I came across literally this week, I came across this verse

and the commentator said that word iniquity.

It's a lovely Bible word. You only ever use it at church,

but I'm always assumed iniquity. It's like you know all the bad

stuffs that you've done, but it's more than that.

It's not just the the you know your your past and your shame

and your guilt and everything. Iniquity is this bent and

twisted nature that you will find inside of you.

And you're saying I will take that.

I have taken it and I've nailed it to the cross.

You know that bent and twisted nature that as hard as you try,

you just can't not click on that link.

As hard as you try, you just lose your marbles with your wife

because she just doesn't As hard as you try, it doesn't matter

what self-control or will you put in.

You just can't not go around the mountain again and again.

And God says I will lean and I'll draw that out of you.

And I've nailed it to the cross. And I believe he did this with

the Samaritan woman. She can't but 4 at the knees of

the next weirdo and say yes and get married and get chewed up

and spat out and divorced and and again and again and he leans

and then he just draws out that iniquity and nails it to the

cross and she goes from round to revival because of one word sown

into that soil, one last one leaning into last week.

If you weren't here, this would be seriously out of context.

There is no more wine for those who weren't here.

Car was preaching on that emptiness.

We're just. I just conquer on.

I am done. I'm sure she felt that I am

done. Are you here feeling that just

done? You know recent statistics of

suicidal ideation in South Africa.

I did the maths. It means there are 153 people

here today with suicidal ideation.

South African suicide statistics 133 here today maybe.

Maybe you're in the queue because you just couldn't even

get yourself to come early enough to hang around with all

these Nicodemus tops and you're thinking no one will notice.

I'm done. Jesus wades into that, that

emptiness, that hopelessness. And if you have said show me you

care, this is Jesus showing you he cares.

He's heard you, he's seen you, he's come down.

I'm done. Here's one that you concern to

that soil. Isaiah 44 three says I will pour

water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground.

You know, in the late 1940s, there were two elderly ladies in

the Hebrides who had grieved by the spiritual climates of the

area that they lived in. There was no interest in God.

No one was coming to church anymore.

More churches were closing and prisons opening and they'd ever

seen in that area of Scotland. And then they came across this,

this verse. I will pour water on the thirsty

land and streams on the dry ground.

And I said, Lord, if you will do that, we will plant that seed.

And they planted seed after seed after seed.

And it was only about 3 or 4 months later.

I really thought it was years of travail.

But a few months later, God did exactly that.

And the Hebrides was gripped by a revival, the greatest revival

in living memory. Thousands of people getting

saved, churches planted, missionaries sent there was such

the the presence of God was so tangible.

These testimonies where people were fishermen, you know,

fishermen, I mean, they make they make Giovanni look like

like Charles play, you know what I'm saying?

And they're out there. Rover.

Yeah, I won't finish that sentence, you know the ad.

But they're out at sea and they come close to the coast and the

presence of God is so tangible that they make for the coast.

They get go straight into the harbour and they go to the

police station to say I need to confess my sins.

I don't know if there's someone that can just confess my sins

and want to know how to get saved because they prayed, Ah,

pour water on that thirsty land. Pour water on that thirsty land.

And God did it, got rescued and restored and renewed and

redeemed. Doesn't matter how dark the

situation, he wades in and he's plants a seed and he plants a

seed. And so that is what we see with

Jesus dealing. He teaches Nicodemus and he

talks to the Samaritan woman and maybe he needs to teach us with

our self-righteous religious opinionated efforts and

performance teachers. God is not like that.

Or maybe in his gentleness, he needs to just come and talk and

let His word bring hope and light into that dark place.

But whichever side of the spectrum you found or anywhere

in between, I want to give you homework.

And it's simply this. Your homework for this week is

sow the Word into your wilderness.

Sow the Word into your wilderness.

This is a series called Encounters with Jesus.

Jesus is called the Word and sow Encounters with Jesus into your

wilderness. They did a study of 40,000

Christians between the ages of 18 and 80 and they wanted to

know like, I mean, we, we read it, you know, the Bible says God

confirms his word with signs and wonders following really can I,

can I sow some seed and, and trust that God will confirm it

with signs and wonders. And so they did this

unbelievable study, 40,000 people between the ages of 18

and 80, and they asked one question.

They just asked how many times do you engage with the word of

God? And what they found was

staggering. They found the people that only

engaged with Scripture once a week, really very little change.

That lion stayed on the same axis. 2 * a week. 3 * a week.

Very little change at four times a week.

All of a sudden, lives somehow began to be radically impacted

by the word. Here's some of the stats.

Loneliness dropped by 45%. Anger down by 30%.

Anxiety halved. Bitterness dropped by 40%.

Alcoholism dropped by 57%. Dennis 57%.

Porn addiction dropped by 61% simply by encountering Jesus

through the word and sharing their faith and discipling.

Others jumped by 250% because cannot encounter Jesus and

remain the same. I can preach till the cows come

home. You know what difference it will

make? Nothing.

But you encountered Jesus at the well.

You will never be the same again.

We'll be Speaking of you in 2000 years time.

So that is your invitation. Sow some seeds into the

wilderness of your heart. Come back again next week.

Let the Word Pierce through the dark night of your soul and let

the God of grace lavish you and win you over as your life has

changed just like mine has been through the Word.

Thank you.