MK040 Sermons
Gracious Acceptance (Audio)
We'll have some pictures for you over the next few weeks to see the progress, but I wanted to take just this opportunity to give you a glimpse of not only the property and the building, but also the questions that we're asking about what God's plans are and what He has for us. There's some of these spaces where we know, some of them we don't know. I've heard lots of ideas of what we're going to do to make sure that God's plans are, some of them we don't know, and I've heard lots of ideas of what we could do in that space, and some of them I hear, and I'm like, just shaking my head and saying, "Lord, please know, please know," and then I hear it again and again, and I'm like, "Oh, maybe that's what He wants us to do." So I don't know. We don't know what He has for us. We're just waiting and listening and talking and praying and the areas where we know what God wants us to do. We're busy at work on those areas, and the areas that we don't know we're praying and waiting for Him to provide direction for us. Well, when I started 8th grade, I switched schools. I had been in the same school from 1st through 7th grade. I knew all the teachers. I knew where all the buildings were. I had the same classmates for that series of years. I knew what I had to do to just get by in the classes. I knew what I had to do to get my classmates in trouble and me not in trouble. I knew all the ropes of how to survive in this school, and then everything changed, and I switched schools in 8th grade. And I can still remember that day my mom pulled up and they are a red VW bus and let me out of the bus to go to this new school. I likely had on my orange corduroys, which were one of my favorite pairs of pants at that time. And I remember walking up those steps. It was a church called Cowberry Baptist Church, and I went to a school that was there at that church. I had to sit on some steps and wait for a shuttle to take us to another building. And I wondered if anybody was going to talk to me. I wasn't an outgoing kid at that time in my life, and a guy named Wayne came up to me and introduced himself, and Wayne was a year older than me, and began to talk to me. And Wayne didn't know my story. Wayne didn't know anything about my life. Wayne did not know that I was hungry for relationships. Wayne didn't know that my father wasn't very involved in my life. He was a pastor and very busy with the church, and my mom was busy helping other people. And I had five siblings at four other siblings at home, and as the oldest, I had kind of assumed some responsibility that wasn't my own, because of some things that were said and statements were made. And I was just a kid hungry to be valued, and hungry to accept it, and hungry to have a friend. And Wayne moved towards me and reached out to me. And he became a friend, and really a friend for the rest of our lives. And I realize at that moment in time, and I've had these moments as all of us have, when we enter something new, that fear of will I be accepted, will I be welcomed, rises up inside of us, and the need and longing for that pushes up. I mean, think about the last time you started a new school. Think about the last time you began a new job. Think about the last, think about when you walked through those doors, and you weren't sure if you knew anyone. Think about that time. You met a family, and you wondered if this family would welcome you, even though you love their son and daughter, would they welcome you in? We all face those experiences wondering, will I be accepted? Will I be welcomed? And at the core of our being is this basic need to be accepted and to be valued. It's something that's there for a part of us. It's the relational component that God has created in us. This need to be in relationships. God said it's not good for you to be alone, and so there's this deep longing to be in relationship, and to be accepted. God said to Jesus when he's here on this earth, he said, "This is my son who I'm delighted with. I'm thrilled with. I'm pleased with an overwhelming sense of acceptance. And when Christ is on the cross, one of his cries was, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The greatest moment of rejection and abandonment that the Father had ever demonstrated towards his own Son. And so for all of us, there's a part of us of needing to be accepted, of needing to be valued, of having someone welcoming us in. And it's something at the core of all of our being, and some of us move towards relationships in ways because it's so strong within us. We almost strangle people, and I've been down that road as well with trying to be involved in their lives. And others of us, we go the opposite extreme because we say, "I don't need anyone," because we've tried to move and we've been hurt and wounded, and we just say, "I don't need anyone and keep everybody in arm's length and just live life in our own world, on our own." Some talk too much, some don't talk at all, an attempt to just find out if I will be accepted. This morning, we're going to continue our series entitled Moving Day that we began last week in anticipation. If you haven't been here with us of our first service being in Reinholds on June 7th, which is just six, a little over six weeks from now, and that's where we're going to be having our first service. And in preparation for that service, I asked last week, "How many of you like change and like five of you put your hands up?" The majority of you are excited about Moving to Reinholds. So we have this internal tension that we can't wait to go, but we hate change. And so we began last week to talk about the tensions that rise up in us when we look at those things. And if you weren't here with us last week, I encourage you to go online and listen just to catch some of those thoughts that I talked about. As many things change in the life of our church as we move to a new place, one of the things that will not change is at the core who we are as a church and the values that we hold to that we embrace. And last week, we began just to talk real briefly about the purpose of our church and what that is. And that's that we want to be a place where individuals are invited to love God fully and love others deeply. And that really is Jesus' instruction to His followers and we want people to love God fully with everything that they have. And we talked last week that that's kind of hard for us to know, "How do I love God? Who's the creator of the universe? How do I do that?" Because He's made everything. And the example that we have of God's love for us through His sacrifice of His Son Jesus. And so we love God. One of the ways that we love God is when we sacrifice for other people, when we love others well, the same way that God has loved me. Not unconditionally because only God can love us unconditionally. I can't love anybody no matter how much I love them unconditionally because I'm going to mess up. And there are times I'm going to want things for myself and they're not going to be able to give those things to me. So part of what we've challenged ourselves is say one of the values about loving others well that we want to see to be true of us here at CCC is that we graciously accept one another, that we graciously accept one another. And this is a value that I see show up all the time here at CCC. I watch people that are guests that come in and I kind of know some of the people that are here on a regular basis and some of you sit in the same place now that I move the chairs around, you don't know where to sit and you're a little disoriented, but you'll migrate to your spot and you'll find your spot, you know. But I watch those of you that have, when someone comes in new and I watch people that interact with them and engage them and we have this gathering here called NEX where we meet with people who are new to CCC and we tell them what's something that stood out to you when you came here and they said people were friendly and people engaged me and people showed an interest in me. And that's not Johnny and Tim and I, that's not the pastoral statue and that's our church doing that. I know that this value of graciously accepting others, regardless of their background and past and experience and story, is something that is part of what happens when people come through these doors. But we want it not just to be part of something that happens when we come through these doors, but we want it to be part of our lives every single day and every interaction that God puts in front of us all week long. And this morning I want us to take some time and look at a story in John chapter 4. If you have your Bibles, John chapter 4, and we're going to look at the story of a woman who wasn't accepted by many people until she met Jesus. John chapter 4. If you don't have a Bible or a guy's have some and they're passing them out, we'd love to have you follow along this morning either in the Bibles or on the screen. While you're turning there, I just want to put in a little plug, how many of you have seen the TV series it's on right now, A.D.? Anybody seen that TV series? Oh, hardly any of you. Oh, my goodness. Sunday night. What time is it? 8 o'clock? I can't think 9 o'clock? Okay. I watched the one last week about Thomas when he was doubting, which I preached on the week before, and wow, it was fantastic. It was excellent. It really, really was. So this is done by the people who did the, is it the Bible? Is that what it was? I think the one that was on earlier. And it's taking the story of the book of Acts. So after Jesus died, moving forward through the story of the book of Acts. So I would strongly recommend it. Don't get plugs about TV shows too often from up front here. But if you're there in John four, let me tell you what's happening in John chapter four. In John chapter four, John's telling us stories of things that happen in the life of Jesus. John's writing is different than all the other, the other three guys. The other three guys like this happened and then this happened and this happened and this I'm kind of almost chronological, but not quite. But John just kind of randomly, well, this happened and then this happened and then let me tell you about this thing that happened. Let me tell you about this thing that happened and the purpose of it is at the very end because John wants to convince people that Jesus is who he says he is. And so John selectively identifies these stories to help people get a sense that there is something radically different about this guy and you should consider what he has to say and turning your life over to him. So John tells a story about a religious guy, Nicodemus, who comes to him in the secrecy of the night because he's not sure what his buddies will think. And then John switches and he tells a story of Jesus with an encounter with a woman in John four. If you're there in your Bibles, look at these first couple verses in John four, beginning in verse three, it says, "So he loved Judea and went back once more to Galilee. Now I had to go through Samaria, so he came to a town in Samaria called Saikar. Near the pot of ground, Jacob had given to his son, Joseph. So Jesus is going from Jerusalem, Judea back up north to Galilee, and if you look at this picture on the map, so he's down a Galilee, a Jerusalem, he's heading back up to Galilee, the obvious would be that you'd go just do north, but they didn't do that in those days. They took the roundabout way through Pariah all the way to get up there because they did not want to go through the town of Samaria. It would be a little bit like going to Delaware every time you had to go to Philadelphia. That's what it would be a little bit like because you want to avoid, you know, driving through Westchester and downtown, those areas, you know, and that's the only way to do that is to avoid them. And you just drove it to avoid it. And it took quite a bit longer as well, it's about 90 miles due north, so imagine what it would take to go a little bit further that direction. But if you look in the text there, it says, and John records this, he says he had to go through Samaria. He had to go through there. In verse 6 it said, "Jacob's well was there, and Jesus tired as he was from the journey sat down by the well and it was about noon." Wells in those days are not like wells today where you kind of have them buried and you don't even know they're there, or like a picture you might have envisioned of a well where it's got, you know, kind of stones stacked around it and a thing over top and you crank it and you lower it down and bring the bucket out and you dump it, you know, like you might have seen in earlier days in our country, but that was just usually a dug down in the ground into the rock, and then a capstone was over top of it to keep dirt out of your young children from falling into it. They're also set their buckets on there to fill it, and so Jesus sits down there, and John says because he's tired. One of the things John does for us is he not only in John chapter 1 talks about Jesus' divinity, meaning that he is God in the bending it, the word became flesh and the word was with us, talking about Jesus from the beginning as God was, but he talks about his humanity. He was tired. He was thirsty. He wept. He fell asleep. It goes on to say that while he was sitting there about noon, a Samaritan woman came to draw water. Now in those days, water was not collected in the middle of the day. Water was collected in the morning and in the evening, and the idea why you don't go get water in the middle of the day, the idea why, it's too hot, it's too hot. What's the temperature in the middle of the day in that land, in that area, Tim, what's the temperature in the idea, 100 degrees, so you're not going to go get water in the middle of the day. So you're going to go get it in the morning before you begin your day and in the evening, and it didn't just begin recently that women traveled in packs for these things that happened back then as well. And so to see a woman coming by herself to a well in the middle of the day didn't make any sense, made no sense. There's something wrong with this picture. The only kind of woman who would show up in the middle of the day at a well by herself was a woman who is an outcast socially or a woman who had done something very, very wrong. That's the only kind of woman that would show up at a well by herself in the middle of the day. And so she approaches the well, Jesus says to her, "Will you give me a drink?" Now the woman is stunned by this on a couple different fronts because as Jesus is there sitting on this well and he sees a woman approaching him in that culture even today what a man would do is he would get up and move approximately 20 feet away and wait over there until she was done. Say, "Why is that?" Why is that? Well, a couple of different reasons. One, it's just a matter of the culture and propriety that especially a man by himself and a woman by himself, he would move away. But it's also to protect his character and reputation. If you recall the story of Joseph, what happened when a woman pursued him and made false accusations against him and there were no other witnesses, where did Joseph ended up in prison? Jesus wasn't concerned about his reputation might be damaged that he was there by this woman with no other witnesses around. One is careful to note it's a Samaritan woman. If you go back to that map and just bring that map up, the area that they refused to go through was the area of Samaria. Samaria was an area that was settled after the Syrians conquered this region of the world and some of the Jews were still left kind of the poor and people that weren't of any significance. They were left in that area and they re-planted some of Syrians in that area and eventually some of them married with some of the Jews and they became the Samaritans. They formed their own separate religion, their own separate faith, their own separate temple and the Jews did not like them. They did not like them. Three hundred years prior the Greeks had used that area of Samaria as a base to control the Jewish territories. In 128 BC the Jews destroyed the Samaritan temple and in retaliation the Samaritans then spread dead bones all over the Jewish temple to desecrate it so nobody could worship it until it had been consecrated again. So these are people that did not like one another. They did not like one another. Jesus did not allow their ethnic differences to keep him from her. Then he asked her, he says, "Will you give me a drink? Will you give me a drink?" Jesus puts himself in a place of needing something from that woman. That's what he did to someone who was on the outside. When we encounter someone on the outside, what do we think? Well, what can I do to bring them to the inside, to help them feel included, to help them feel apart, to help them not feel alone out there? That's not what Jesus does. This goes to the woman on the outside and says, "I'm kind of thirsty and I need something. Could you help me?" This flies in the face of everything in our culture today because our culture, and especially where we live, is all oriented around having what I need so I can help you. Not being weak and needy, so you need to help me. There's no way I'm going to let you see that, but Jesus does. He elevates this woman's sense of worth, her value, or dignity by being asked to help him with her resources. Look at verse 8, "The Samaritan woman said, 'You are a Jew and I'm a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?'" Her gender is not a barrier either. Her ethnicity is not a barrier and she can't figure this out because this just doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen. I was trying to come up with an analogy, even for a woman, because we tend to think about Jesus being there and she approached him, but she's a woman who we're going to see a little bit later in this story has an incredible amount of pain and heartache. She approaches this individual who doesn't move away like they're supposed to and engages him in dialogue. I say this not to create a characterization, but imagine, ladies, it's late at night and you pull up to a gas station and the person at the tank that you're waiting to go and use is decked down in black leather on a Harley with his buddies. I won't take a poll and ask how many of you are going to go approach those individuals and ask for some help and you might wait till they leave and then get what you need. See this just went against everything in that culture from the perspective of a male Jewish rabbi and the perspective of a Samaritan woman. There was nothing that works in this story for the person that's reading and hearing it and internally just revolting against how could he, how could she? What did he did? Let's look at their conversation. Jesus says to her, "If you knew the gift of God and who is it that asked you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." This phrase "gift of God" is usually referred to what was called the Torah, the five books of the Old Testament, which the Samaritans and the Jews both agreed on. That's the only part they agreed on in the whole Bible. Jesus is saying, "If you knew your history, your faith, you would know who I am and you would ask me for something and I would give you living water." This phrase "living water" is going to come up over and over again. When you get water out of a well, is that water moving or is it still? Which one is it? It's still, right? It's still. It's not moving. It's still. Where do you think you might get living water from? Any idea? Water is flowing. So where's water flowing? A spring, a creek, a river. Jesus using a metaphor to get this woman's attention, he said, "I would give you some water that was alive, some water that was moving." That's what I would offer to you. Look at the woman's answer in verse 11, she says, "Sir, you don't even have anything to get water and the well is deep. Where are you going to get this living water?" They were in the town of Shechem, which is where, if you go back and read in the book of Genesis, is where Jacob actually dug a well in that area. And you know, there's no rivers in Shechem, there's no streams in Shechem. They basically dug through solid rock to get to the water source in these wells. That's why the protection of water in the first century or in the ancient Near East was so critical. She said, "Where in the world are you going to find this?" And then she takes a little rabbit trail, "Are you greater than her father Jacob who gave us the well and drank it from himself, has also did his sons and his livestock?" She kind of tries to get Jesus wrapped up in historical debate. And if you look at the next verse, Jesus doesn't even enter it. Look at, he says in verse 13, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, the water of the well. But over drinks the water I give will never thirst. Indeed a well I give them will become in them a spring of water after welling up to eternal life." Jesus says, "I'm going to offer you something that you'll never thirst." Again, he comes back to the living water and the woman's like, "Okay, okay, sir, give me this water so I won't get thirsty and I don't have to keep coming here to draw the water." It's like, "Alright, if you've got something for me, I'll take it, I'll take it." That's the way a lot of people come to Jesus, they kind of come to Jesus and say, "You know Jesus, if you can fix my marriage, I'll take what you have to offer. If you can help me figure out how to parent my kids a little better, I'll take the deal. If you can promise me a job and then I'll find a job I like, I'll grab that one. If you can help me deal with this pain in my life, these demons that traumatize me, these things in the closet, I don't want anybody to see if you can help me with that, I'll take the deal." She just wanted something to make her life easier, it's all she wanted. But think about it for a moment. Jesus is having this conversation with a Samaritan woman, he's offering living water, he's offering living water, she tries to rabbit trail, he comes back, offers her living water, finally she says, "I'll take it and what did you almost expect Jesus to do next?" Well let me tell you how you can now have living water. She's ready to sign on the dotted line, she's ready to seal the deal, she's ready to take what he's given her. I mean when I was younger and people taught me how to share Jesus' people, they were like, "We got to tell him this and you got to tell him this and you got to tell him this and if they say this and you tell him this and if they say this and you pray and they're done, they're in, they're, you know, why isn't Jesus closed the deal when she wants to take exactly what he's offering? Look at the next phrase, she says, "Hey, why don't you go find your husband, I'd like to meet him, I'd like to meet him, you're thinking, "Wait a minute Jesus, he got a woman who's a Samaritan, she's not a Jew, she doesn't believe in you and yeah you kind of got her right at the doorway to walk through the door and all you want to know is about her husband?" Kind of leads us scratching our heads a bit, doesn't it? Because not only does he not move when she comes, but then he puts himself on a place of need asking her to help him, then he begins to talk to her about something she might desire when she's ready to take what he offers, he changes the subject and shows an interest in her personal life. Jesus says in Matthew 11, he says, "Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest, take my yoke upon you and learn from me." I hope we walk away learning something from Jesus this morning, because Jesus met people, Jesus approached people, Jesus related to people in ways that I don't think many Christians do, because I think most Christians, they go one of two extremes, either they're repulsed by people who are different than them and want to throw stones at them and stay on the other side of the fence or they're just buddy-buddy with them and they don't know a look about them any more than they do, they're people that they sit next to in church. Jesus doesn't take either one of those paths. She's a woman coming to the well by herself, easily of marriageable age, so why doesn't she have a husband, as she says in the next verse, "I don't have a husband." Did her husband die? Was she a prostitute? Jesus then goes on to say, "You're correct, you don't have a husband. You actually have had five of them." As we looked at a few weeks ago, or excuse me, as we looked at back in the fall at the subject of divorce and that culture and that day, a woman could not divorce a man, but a man could divorce a woman simply over a meal, he did not like that she prepared. This is a woman who had known rejection from a man she had committed her life to, not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, but five different times. She had been rejected by the individual that God had established to provide and to protect her. She was now living with someone to avoid having to beg as a beggar on the street or sell her body as a prostitute, which she in all reality probably feels like she's already done. Jesus still didn't walk away. Even though her marital status and her sexual activity were completely opposite of what he held to and what he valued. He then has a discussion about her religious differences and where they worship and she says, "Well, we worship here and you worship there and who's the right one." Even her religious background is not a barrier to him. She changes the subject one final time, look in verse 25, she says, "I know that the Messiah is coming and when he comes, he's going to help us figure all of this out." And Jesus drops a bombshell and says, "Yeah, that's me." And at that precise moment in time, John records for us that the disciples decided to show up with lunch and look at their response in the next verse, verse 27, says that they were surprised that Jesus was talking to a woman. And John somehow, maybe because he was one of the guys who's writing this, records what's going on in his head, he says, "What does she want? What are you talking to her? She leaves her water jar in the next verse and goes to town and convinces everybody in the whole town to come and see Jesus." You know, as I sat with this passage and I thought about it, I thought Jesus didn't tell her to repent, did he? I don't think so. Jesus didn't criticize, Jesus didn't point out her failed marriages, did he? I don't think so. He didn't point out that she was living in adultery with a guy right now, did he? I don't think so. He didn't point out and criticize the fact that she had some different religious orientations of where they should worship, did he? I don't think so. He didn't get into disputes about their history and about their political orientation, did he? I don't think so. And I thought to myself, as I sat with this passage, I thought, I think this has an incredible amount of implications for us here at CCC. We're moving into this transition in the life of our church that we've never faced before. We're moving into a community that is welcoming us and waiting anxiously for us to arrive. People who have told us they're planning to come to our church as soon as we start having services there. People who have been hurt and wounded by some pain from difficult life experiences are looking forward to this. But Jesus didn't even circle back and offer her living water again. And somehow she was so amazed by Jesus, she went and convinced all the townspeople to come and see him. Now think about this with me. This is the town outcast. This is the woman that doesn't get invited to any parties. Nobody hangs out with her. Nobody has dinner with her. Nobody would even invite her to go to the well. But she was so amazed by Jesus that he offered her something she couldn't quite figure out. And he cared about the disaster of a life and the agony and pain and broken as she had lived in. That's literally all she knew. Jesus didn't say repent for the kingdom of heaven is near. Jesus didn't say believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. He didn't say any of that. And I wonder what it would look like if when people hear that you go here and that we're a part of this church that's moving there, that instead of inviting them to come to church, you took an interest in them and their lives and their story like Jesus did with this woman. Say, what do you mean, John? Just mean be nice to him. No, I'm not talking about just being nice to people. You all are very nice people. Talking of caring about her heart and her soul. I heard someone tell this story this weekend about being on a plane and feeling the Holy Spirit prompting him. You need to talk to this person. He didn't want to talk to them. They just wanted to listen to their music or read the book. You need to talk. You need to talk. This person kept trying to talk to them. They kept ignoring them and kind of turning their book like this so they didn't have to talk to them. And I'm like, OK, God, I'll talk to them. That's the guy I said, what do you do for a living? He said, I'm an electrical engineer. The guy is thinking, I don't know anything about electricity or engineering let alone the two of those things together. So he said to the guy, he said, so what's an electrical engineer do? And about a minute, he told the story and he's like, I hate to tell you, I still don't really get it. So he said, can you tell me more? So he did it about three minute version. He's like, you know, I'm sorry, it's just not clicking. I can't really figure it out. He said, could you just tell me what you do every on a normal Tuesday and 30 minute increments? The guy's looking at him like, are you serious? Do you really care? The guy's like, yeah, I kind of like to know what you do every day, 30 minute increments on a Tuesday. So he went through every part of his day and 30 minute increments, he's like, oh, I kind of get it now. And then he asked the guy this question. Instead of saying, why did you become an electrical engineer? He said, what did you want to become when you were a little boy? The guy said a painter, he said a painter, he's like, yeah, I want to contest when I was 10 years old, watercolor paints, incredibly, incredibly difficult to do. And the man proceeded to tell the story of how one night his father burst into his room tore up his paints, broke all of his brushes and his easels and said, I don't want to wuss for a son, it's going to paint. And the man became an electrical engineer. All he was was curious about this person's life and about this person's story. And all Jesus was was curious about this woman and her life and her story. And there was something about that that touched so deeply in her soul that made her feel so incredibly accepted that she went, the town outcast convinced her whole village of likely 100 to 200 people. You've got to come see this guy and hear what he has to say and look at the results in verses 39 and 41, it says, many of the Samaritans believed in him, why? Because of the woman's testimony, verse 41 and because of his words, many of them became believers. And there was a whole village of people whose lives were changed because Jesus showed an interest in the life of one woman, you know, it really makes me wonder if somehow we've completely distorted this whole idea of what it looks like to love people. Somehow we've gotten our heads that what this means is that I just invite them to church and I help them out if they're in a pinch. And I think there's more to it than that. Because when you look at the life of Jesus, he would be going along and there would be something happening over here and he would stop and be fully present in the life of someone who everyone else ignored and their lives were changed because of him. You see, gracious acceptance is all about how I see other people. But how I see other people starts with how I view myself. Say, John, I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to move towards other people. I don't know how to care about other people. It has to start with how you view them. You see, I don't think Jesus saw this woman as a five-time divorce woman who was living in sin in a Samaritan social outcast. I don't think he viewed her that way. I think he saw this woman as someone who was made in the image of God by the Creator God himself designed to be a woman who was open to receive and ready to offer life. And that's why he moved towards her. It's so easy to think of ourselves as better than others. We live in a very non-multiracial community. We don't deal with racism, but it's here. How do we view other races? How do we view other ethnicities? How do we view other people who hold different political views? Different views about sexual orientation, different views about God, different views about faith. That didn't seem to matter to Jesus, and I don't know why it matters so much to us. We looked at the Sermon on the Mount just a few over the last number of weeks and months, and in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said, "By the way, if you tell a lie, if you are not truthful, if you are a liar, you are considered a murderer. If you lust, you are considered an adulterer." I'm going to tend to view myself that way, tend to view myself as someone who doesn't do those things. Okay, what Paul said in 1 Timothy, chapter 1, he says, "We know that the law is made not for the righteous, but for lawbreakers," and look at this list. He says, "The rebels, the ungodly, the sinful, the unholy, and the air religious, okay, those are bad people." Then look at this list. "For those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for the slave traitors, the liars, and the purgers." And later in verse 15, Paul says this, he says, "Christ Jesus came in the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst." Paul saw himself as a horrible sinner that was rescued by Jesus. And because of that, he was able to offer the hope and the message of the gospel and grace and mercy to people regardless of their background, regardless of their story, regardless of their life situation. What would it be like to be a church that graciously accepted people regardless of any of those things? And if we start with each one of us and the people that we encounter tomorrow, tomorrow, the people in your classroom, the people in the hallways, the teachers in your school, the people on the plant floor, the individuals in the office, the person that you encounter at the cash register that waits on your table, that drops off your mail, the random stranger that you meet. This story begins with Jesus had to go through Samaria. There was someone he knew he had to meet. And I believe that if not tomorrow, sometime this week, you will cross paths with someone that God has plans for you to meet. And you will have to make a decision in that moment of time, will I view myself as better than this person and not reach out to them? Or will I see myself as someone who is simply a recipient of God's mercy and God's grace that I never and could never do anything to deserve? And how can I be curious about and care about and love this person? Some of you know of people in your world right now who are on the outside, who are not in, and those are the people this week you need to move towards. But maybe God is going to bring someone into your life for that to take place this week. As you go, I want to challenge you to ask yourself these two questions that are going to come up on the screen. The first question is, who is God calling me to graciously accept and taking an interest in their life, their story, and their soul? And second of all, who is God calling you to love, the way God loves you? It's going to cost you something. It's going to be a sacrifice. That's the way God loves. He sacrifices. He gives up what he loves the most. That's how he loves. It might cost you a little bit of your time. It might cost you a little bit of your money. It might cost you a little bit of your reputation. It might cost you a little bit of influence. It might cost you being in. Are you willing to sacrifice that for someone this week? And learn from Jesus. Let's pray together as it comes. God, this story about Jesus is I know one for me that I see very differently because I realize in my life there's people and there's situations that I at times avoid. I know what they are, God. I don't know why I do that, but I do. Lord, I just pray that my heart this week would be open to the people that will cross my path. I know this last week I crossed paths with a few people and I brushed past them because I was in a hurry to get somewhere. And he just said to me, "John, slow down because I might have someone for you to meet." Lord, help us not just when people walk through these doors, but when we encounter people in our community, when we counter people in our walk of life, help us to graciously accept them like you have done for each one of us in your name we pray, Lord.