Jesus and the Wounded
Transcript
All right, well, it's good to see you guys this morning. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Matt Freeman. I'm one of the pastors here with Mill City Church. And I am very, very excited about the scripture that we're going to be looking at this morning. Um, because it's one of my favorite interactions that Jesus has with any person in the Gospels. In fact, it's one of the earliest stories that I can remember from my childhood.
And since then, it's just been one of my favorite stories. And I think part of that is because there's so much in this story that I think that all of us are actually going to be able to relate to. So I'm just really excited about it. Um, we're in the second week of our Jesus and People series. And what we're aiming to do in this series is take a look at the Gospels and try to answer the question, How does God want to relate to me in normal, everyday life? Okay, and I'm going to say that again.
How does God want to relate to me in normal, everyday life? And for most of us, it's kind of hard for us to imagine because God seems so far off sometimes in the day in and day out of our lives. And the New Testament kind of picks up on this idea. And here's what it says in Colossians 1.15. It says that He, when it says He, it means Jesus. Jesus is the image of the invisible God.
Jesus is the image of the invisible God. So that when we look at the life of Jesus, when we look at the things that He said, the things that He did, the conversations and the interactions that He had with people, we're actually getting a perfect reflection of God's character and nature. So that's what we're doing in this series. We're going to the Gospels and we're looking where Jesus has interaction with people. And we're saying, okay, what do we learn about Jesus and how He relates to a person? And how is Jesus wanting us to relate to Him?
And then we're bringing it to our side and trying to apply it and say, okay, what does it look like for Jesus to relate to us in normal, everyday life? How is He calling on me to relate to Him? And last week, Chet kicked off our series by talking about Jesus and how He relates to the desperate. And we looked at the story. There were two different characters in the story. You had Jairus who was a synagogue ruler and his young daughter was sick and at the point of death.
And he comes running to Jesus in his desperation. And Jesus meets him in his time of need. There's a woman that had had a bleeding disorder for 12 years. And she runs up just to grab the hem of Jesus' garment. And she's healed. Jesus meets her in her time of need.
And what we're looking at this morning is a little bit different. And in fact, it's going to be a little bit harder for us to see because it's something that can be so easily hidden. And in a room this size, I would guess that we have people in this room that are struggling with the very thing that I'm talking about. That there's something in your past. Maybe it's something that you've done. Maybe it was something that was done against you.
Hurt, pain, and shame that you just don't want people to know about. Much less God. What would God think of me if he knew the things that I did? Would he love me? Would he accept me? What about other people?
Would they love me and would they accept me? And as we walk through this story this morning, if you begin to relate to the character that Jesus is talking to, my prayer for you is that you see very clearly how Jesus wants to relate to you this morning. And if we walk through it and you're not necessarily relating to the person in this story, what I want you to see is how Jesus relates to her so that we as Christians, so that we as a church can help people who are walking through this situation. Okay? So we kind of understand what we're listening for.
So if it impacts us, we want to see how Jesus wants to relate to us. And if it doesn't necessarily land, we're looking at how do we as Christians engage with people in normal everyday life who might be struggling with this. Okay? So I'm going to pray before we hop in. I'm going to ask the Holy Spirit to open up our minds, open up our hearts so that we can understand God's word. You guys pray.
Let's pray. God, I thank you for this morning. I thank you for the truth that is revealed in this story. I thank you for what we're going to get to see. God, I'm asking by the power of your Holy Spirit that you would open us up. God, that we would let our guard down, that we would very clearly hear from you this morning, that we would see how Jesus wants to relate to us, God, and how we in turn are to respond to him.
I ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. So if you've got a Bible, go ahead and grab it. We're going to be in the book of John, chapter 4. And the story that we're going to be looking at is commonly referred to as Jesus and the woman at the well.
And so if you don't have a Bible, just grab one of those blue and white Bibles that we have sitting on the seats. It's actually going to be on page 578. If you brought your own Bible, I don't know what page it's going to be on. Good luck. And if you're here this morning and you don't have a Bible, please just take one of those with you. That's what they're there for.
We want everyone to have a Bible. And before we hop in, I just want to set the stage for what we're about to do. What we're going to look at is a rather long conversation that Jesus has with this woman. And so we're going to walk all the way through the conversation. We're going to point out important details. We're going to look at the things that Jesus says, the things that she says.
And then at the very end, we're going to land on our main point and settle there for a little bit so that we can see how Jesus wants to relate to us and how we ought to relate to him. Okay? Make sense? All right. So here we go.
John, chapter 4. And we'll actually skip the first two verses. We'll start in verse 3. All right. He, and again, that's he meaning Jesus, left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria.
So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. All right.
So here's the scoop. Jesus and his disciples have been down in Judea, which is the region where Jerusalem was. He had been teaching. He had been doing miracles. He had been making disciples. And now they're going to just another region that they had spent a good amount of their time in.
And scripture tells us that he had to go through Samaria. Okay? So if you were looking at a map, and I'm going to draw you an imaginary map right here. So use your imagination. If Judea is here, then Samaria was north, and smack dab in the middle of them was Samaria. Okay?
So they had to go Judea through Samaria all the way to Galilee. And the scripture tells us that they ended up in a town called Sychar, which is where Jacob's well was. And I love that John just kind of adds in that little detail. And the well plays a prominent part in the story. But this isn't the first mention of Jacob's well that we actually see in scripture.
We see Jacob's well all the way back in the book of Genesis. God comes to Abraham. He says, I'm going to bless you, and I'm going to increase your descendants, and I'm going to bless you, the whole earth, through your family. And we see the line go from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob. And this is Jacob's well. And we even see it again later in the book of Joshua when the Israelites are coming out of Egypt and they're entering into the promised land.
There's Jacob's well. And here we are thousands of years later again. And Jacob's well is still a part of God's story. This is a small little theme that you see God's promise kind of continuing on through the scripture here. It's really cool. So verse 6, Jacob's well was there.
So Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a drink. And then John tells us, for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. And honestly, verse 6 is actually one of my favorite parts of this story because I forget sometimes that Jesus was human.
Like I know that Jesus was the son of God, but he stepped out of heaven and he was completely human. And he and his disciples had been traveling for a long time. And he's worn out. It says it was about the sixth hour. And he's sitting beside the well. And he's smelly, sweaty, hungry, thirsty, like most of us are here in Columbia during the summer.
Okay, so very similar to that. And it says it was about the sixth hour. And that's a detail that most of us would just kind of blitz right by because that's not how we tell time. But the sixth hour was noon. It was midday. It was the hottest part of the day.
And Jesus is sitting by this well and all he wants is something to drink. And lo and behold, this Samaritan woman is coming up to the well. And Jesus is like, sweet. I'm finally going to get some water. But this is actually kind of weird.
Not that the woman is coming to the well to get water. That was normal. It was the fact that she was coming to the well in the middle of the day and that she was by herself. See, the way that most cultures in this town worked was early in the morning, all the women of the village would get up together and they would travel to the well. They would all go to the well together. It was kind of like a social event.
Sometimes even children would go too. And they would travel to the well to get water for the day, water to cook with, water to clean with, even to water like small plants and crops. And part of the reason they did that was because it wasn't the hottest part of the day. And they were going to have to lug this water back into the village. And so they'd go early in the morning and then they would come back. And if they needed water for the night, right before sunset, they would all travel back to the well together and then back down into the village.
And there are still some cultures in the world that are like this. A couple of years back, I got to spend a little bit of time in Burkina Faso, which is in West Africa. It's just below the Sahara Desert. So it's very much the same kind of climate, same kind of village life that you would have expected here. And that's just what the women did. They would get up early in the morning and you'd see just one person would come out and you'd hear chatter.
You'd hear laughter. And people would just go down to the well, women and children, and then they would come back together. So we just got a clue into the story because that's not normal. Now, we don't know exactly what it means, but the fact that she's coming to the well in the middle of the day and she's coming by herself is just kind of weird. Okay? So Jesus is sitting there.
He's tired. He's thirsty. He's like, jackpot, score. I'm finally going to get something to drink. And he asked her for a drink. In verse 9, The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?
And then John adds in the note, For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Okay. Well, this conversation just went to a whole other level. Read that again. The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
So Jesus just asked this lady for a drink. Not a whole lot to ask for, right? He's just tired. He's thirsty. And her response is kind of cold, kind of distance, putting him at arm's length. And what we're actually seeing unfold here is a nearly thousand-year-old feud between these two groups of people, between the Jews and the Samaritans.
And if you were with us back in the fall during our Bible story series, we actually touched on this briefly, that after the reign of Solomon, the nation of Israel split in two between the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. And what we see through the entire Old Testament is that God's promise, His covenant promise remains with the southern kingdom, with Judah. And the northern kingdom does okay for a little while, But over time they start to marry in with different people groups in the area. They start worshiping other gods. Assyria comes in and swallows them up whole and then spits them back out into the region.
And they resettle there. And by the time they're resettled in this area, they're not even referred to as Israelites anymore. They're being referred to as Samaritans. So the Jews and the Samaritans hated each other because the Jews looked down on them because they were half-breeds. They had gone back on their heritage. And the Samaritans hated the Jews because they excluded them.
They just pushed them out. In fact, if a Jew called another Jew a Samaritan, them's fighting words. I mean, that's like a four-letter word to them. Devout Jews at this time. Again, we've got to go back to our imaginary map. I'm sure you haven't forgotten it.
Devout Jews would have to go. Devout Jews so that they could go from Judea to Samaria. Here's what they would do. They would start here in Judea. They would cross the Jordan River. That's my river.
They would cross the river. They would go up the Jordan River until they were parallel with Galilee. And they would cross back over just so that they didn't have to go through the land of the half-breed Samaritans. I mean, that's hatred. That's pure hatred. That would be like me saying to get from Clemson to Charleston, two of the greatest cities in the world.
Amen. All right. To get from Clemson to Charleston, I'm going to cross over into Georgia. I'm going to go from Augusta all the way down to Savannah. And then I'm going to come up the coast to Charleston just so that I don't have to go through the heart of Gamecock country. And trust me, I thought about it.
And then I moved here, so there's that. In fact, people ask me all the time from back home, like, you moved to Columbia to plant a church? I was like, yeah. I mean, somebody's got to share the good news with the Gamecocks. Why does Matt secretly wear orange all the time? Oh, don't.
That's okay. It's okay, guys. You'll come around. And so Jesus is sitting by this well, and the Samaritan woman comes up, and he casually asks her for a drink of water. And she's just like, who are you, a Jew, talking to me, a Samaritan woman? You can just feel that tension.
But not just that. She plays the gender card, too. She says, you're a Jew, and I'm a Samaritan woman. Because that's another thing. In that culture, men and women didn't talk to each other when they were alone like that, especially if they were strangers. So this conversation just keeps getting weirder.
She's coming to the well at a weird time. There's this weird kind of tension in this relationship. She's kind of being cold and calloused. And here's what Jesus said to her. Let's pick it back up in the story.
Verse 10. Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Okay, you can picture this, right? There's a smelly Jewish guy.
I'm sweaty. I should say sweaty, not just smelly. He's smelly and sweaty. Jewish guy sitting by the well, and he asks her for a drink of water. And when she rejects him, his response is, oh, yeah? Well, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is talking to you, you would have asked me, and I would have given you living water.
And her reaction is like, say what? Bruh, you don't even have a bucket, and the well is deep. I think you've been out in the sun too long. Maybe you're just a little bit dehydrated. And before we go too far with that, it's not, it's probably not like that, where she thought he was crazy for this idea of living water, though we kind of get tripped up on that phrase. It was actually his ability to pull it off.
Because when he's using that phrase living water, living is exactly the same way that we would use the phrase running. We would be saying running water. Now, not like running water out of a faucet, more like you're standing beside a river, and this is running water. This is a constant source of movement. It's this continual welling up of water heading down a stream. So it's not like Jesus walked up and said, hey, you want some of my magic beans?
It's more like well water. I've got a constant source of water you don't even know anything about. And she, again, she's just kind of cold and calloused. And it's like, you don't have a bucket, and this well is deep. And she continues on in verse number 12. She says, who do you think you are?
Who you are in the gift of God. Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us this well. He drank from it himself. And Jesus responds in 13. Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again.
But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water. Okay, obviously at this point we're starting to realize that Jesus and this woman are having two different conversations. What she's saying is, give me some of this water so that I don't have to be thirsty again, so I won't have to keep coming up here to the well to draw water. That sounds great.
But Jesus isn't talking about spiritual water. He's not talking about physical water. He's talking about spiritual water. He's talking about something completely different, and she's missing it. Think about what Jesus has said. He said, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is talking to you, you'd have asked me and I would have given you living water that would become in you a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
And this metaphor is found all throughout the Old Testament. We're going to see in just a little bit. She's not unaware of these Old Testament passages. She's not unaware of these prophecies. And what Jesus is saying is that this promised Messiah, this promised Redeemer, this river of life that can well up, that can save and bring about eternal life, I'm right here. If you knew who I am and the gift of God, and she is completely missing it.
Verse 16, Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband, and come here. The woman answered him, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, You are right in saying I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true. And the conversation just changed. You ever been in one of those conversations where two people are kind of going back and forth and back and forth, and finally somebody says something and it feels like the air gets sucked out of the room?
That's this moment. You can almost imagine. You can almost imagine her. She's kind of perturbed. She's annoyed with this whole conversation. She's finally got her water bucket.
She's just going to head back down into the village. And Jesus says, Go call your husband. She leans back over her shoulder. I don't have one of those. And Jesus says, Yeah, I know. In fact, I know that you've had five husbands, and the man that you're with now is not your husband.
What you have said is true. Stops her. Dead in her tracks. And now for the first time, all of the details, all the little things that we've begun to see in this conversation begin to add up. The fact that she's going to the well in the middle of the day. The fact that she's alone.
The fact that she seems a little bitter. A little calloused. Playing the Samaritan card. Playing the woman card. What this woman, the way I would describe her, is she's someone that is wounded. This woman, whether it's things that she's done, or things that have been done against her, over her life, she's just built up this brick wall around herself, so that people can't get in.
She's been hurt too much. She's gone through too much. And she just wants to keep people out. And I feel like so many of us in this room kind of do the same thing. We don't want to let people in. And it now begins to make sense why this woman was going to the well in the middle of the day by herself.
And here's what I want us to do. We're going to take a time out. Because so often when we read through scripture, we'll go right by that. And we won't think about the implications of what Jesus just said. What he just brought to light. But I want us to just imagine for a second what life actually would have been like for this woman.
Okay? So Jesus just said that she's had five husbands. Here's the options. Okay? Either all five of her husbands have died, all five of them divorced her, or some combination of that. Okay?
So all five died, all five divorced her, or it was some kind of combination thereof. And most scholars believe that the way the text reads and what it's implying here is the divorce. And here's how divorce worked at that time. Only men could initiate divorce. You ever been in love? Some of you are married.
I hope you're in love now. And it just didn't work out. And you had your heart break. Imagine being this woman, and she's married, and she's been told not once, not twice, but five times, you have no value to me. And this was a public thing. It was done in public.
He would write her a letter, and he would kick her out of the house in public shame. And this has happened five times. And this is the worst possible scenario for her, because she's a woman in a culture that did not value women. And this is a side note, and this one's just for free. This is one of the reasons that I love Jesus, and I love our faith so much, is because for centuries, Christians have been on the forefront of fighting for women's rights, that they would be treated with value, and dignity, and honor, and respect. But that's not what this woman had.
This woman actually had no rights outside of either her father or her husband. No economic standing, no status, no ability to go get a job, no ability to go buy land, nothing. And so when she is kicked from her house, she is left with absolutely nothing. And all a man had to do was to find one little fault, and he could write her a letter, and kick her to the curb. Could you imagine the shame and the pain that she felt? And not only that, what do you think life's like for her right now in this village?
Do you think she has any female friends? No. She's the woman that everyone whispers about. She's the one that they all want to gossip about. And when she walks by in the marketplace, wives whisper to their husband, look at that tramp. I better not ever see you talking to her.
Men probably made jokes at her expense as they heard stories from her divorced husbands. It's probably why she stopped going to the well with the other women. She could feel the judgmental glances. She could hear them whispering. She could hear the giggles. And she just couldn't stand it anymore.
And now the only place that this woman feels accepted is with a man who doesn't even have the decency to marry her. Just use and abuse her. Can you feel that? She's just eking out an existence at this point. She doesn't care about respect anymore. She just wants to survive.
And you've got to imagine at some point she's had to ask the question, what is fundamentally wrong with me? I'm broken. I'm damaged. I'm incapable of being loved. And the truth is, there's some of us in this room this morning that are feeling the exact same way. You've got stuff stored up from your past, things that you've done, things that have been done against you, pain and shame and hurt and regret, things that are in your past, those skeletons in your closet that you don't want anybody to know about because you don't know if you'll be loved.
You don't know if you'll be accepted. Maybe it's a loved one that you feel was stolen from you too soon. You've got bitterness locked up inside. Maybe it's the shame that you feel from being molested by some evil jerk when you were a child. Maybe it's the drug addiction that you hide from your family and friends, unable to cope and figure out what to do next. Maybe it's how a church treated you when you found out you were pregnant before you were married.
In fact, that may be more people in this room that would care to admit that a church or a Christian may have treated them poorly and there's so much pain and there's so much hurt. What if it's the secret that you're hiding that you're actually secretly attracted to the same gender? Maybe it's your living situation. Having to lie, having to fake it with your family and friends that you're living with someone you're not married to. You feel alone and isolated and you've just kind of decided that this is how life is going to be. You've gotten really good at faking it.
When the subject's brought up in a conversation, you've gotten really good at just kind of steering it the opposite direction. Pretending on the outside that you're fine while on the inside, you are an absolute mess. Asking the question, how could God ever love me? I'm so dirty. I've got so much shame. I've got so much regret.
And what has happened is that you've allowed the past to define who you are. As the past has begun to define who you are. And this woman is in the exact same situation. She is at the end of her rope. She's hurt. She's got so much pain and she doesn't know what to do with it.
She's got this brick wall that she's built up around her. And Jesus, brick by brick, is tearing this wall down and she finally goes on the final assault. She finally throws it all out there. Verse 19. Pick it back up. The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.
For the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to Him, I know that Messiah is coming, He who is called Christ. When He comes, He will tell us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He. Jesus and this woman keep going back and forth and back and forth and finally she throws out her card.
I know that when the Messiah comes, I know that when the Christ comes, He'll be able to tell us all these things. He'll be able to answer all the hard questions. He'll be able to help me cope with what's happened to me. He'll love me. He'll accept me. And Jesus lovingly in the midst of this conversation through her pain and shame and regret says, I who speak to you am He.
I'm right here. I didn't walk away. I didn't go anywhere. The pain and the shame and the regret. I know you've had all that. I know you've had five husbands.
I know that the man you're with now is not your husband. And I'm right here. And if you're sitting in this room this morning and your heart is breaking and all the words that I'm saying, realize very clearly that Jesus' response is exactly the same to you. And it's the main point of everything that we're talking about this morning. And it's this. Your past does not have to define who you are.
Jesus gives you a new life and identity in Him. Don't just hear it. Let it sink in. Your past does not have to define who you are. Jesus gives you a new life and identity in Him. In this conversation Jesus just walks up and lovingly starts pulling down the bricks in this wall.
Samaritan, I don't care. Woman, I got that. Okay? Five husbands, I don't care. Jesus lovingly pulls down the bricks in her wall. And that's exactly what He wants to do with you.
He wants to lovingly bust through that wall. Your past does not have to define who you are. Jesus gives you a new life and a new identity with Him. Let me ask you this question. Why do you think you're sitting in this room this morning because Jesus is saying I'm right here and it gets even better. It keeps going guys.
Verse 27. Pick it back up. Just then His disciples came back. They marveled that He was talking with a woman but no one said what do you seek or why are you talking with her? So the woman left her water czar and went away into town and said to the people come see a man who told me all that I ever did.
Can this be the Christ? They went out of the town and were coming to Him. Your past does not have to define who you are. Jesus gives you a new life and identity in Him. This woman met Jesus and it changed everything. The scars that she thought would never go away were healed.
The pain that she thought would never subside went away. The shame that she carried was finally set aside because she was filled up by Jesus. She didn't even care about the water bucket anymore because she had found the gift of God. She had found Jesus and by that Jesus had filled all the empty places in her. All the void in her He had filled it. Her past no longer defined who she was.
She had been given new life and identity in Him. And in fact she's so overwhelmed by who Jesus is and what He's done that she just straight up leaves the water bucket and goes running back into town yelling at the top of her lungs come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ? To the same women who had whispered about her to the same men that had shunned her likely to the same family and possibly some of her ex-husbands that had kicked her out because her past no longer defined who she was and the people could see it. It says the people actually came out of the town and followed her and what we're seeing in this story is a beautiful accurate picture of exactly what Jesus ultimately does for all of us.
Jesus came to this earth to take care of all of our past. All of our sin. All of our shame. All of our regret, hurt and pain. Our inability to get things right or to do good things and He died the death that we should die. Jesus paid for our past and He swapped His life for ours.
So He gives us a new life and identity in Him. He rescues us. He redeems us. He calls us fully loved, fully accepted. We are made sons and daughters. You see, this woman's past was not too much for Jesus to handle.
That's why Isaiah 53 says this, He was pierced for our transgressions, sins. He was crushed for our iniquities, another word for sins. Upon Him was the chastisement or the punishment that brought us peace and by His wounds we are healed. The reason this woman was able to run back into the town and yell at the top of her lungs is that she had left her old identity behind and had found her new identity in Him. She didn't care what people thought anymore. She wasn't living in the past.
She was looking to Jesus for her identity and for her life. Do you see the invitation that's being extended to you this morning too? Because Jesus has the same response to all of us. Maybe you're sitting in the room this morning and you're not a Christian. You're just kind of checking this Jesus thing out. His response is the same to you. your past does not have to define who you are.
Jesus gives you a new life and identity in Him. And you're saying, Matt, you don't know what I've done. You don't know what's been done to me. And what I would like to share with you is the gospel is that salvation is not based off of your work, but Jesus' work on your behalf. So whether it's the things that you do well or the things that you do that are bad or the bad things that have been done against you, Jesus says, I can take care of it.
You don't have to live in the past anymore. I'll give you new life and identity in me. And maybe you're in the room this morning, you're a Christian, but you would say you're in that category. That there's not a day goes by that you don't think about that thing, that that feeling doesn't creep into your mind, that you're not reminded of shame and pain and hurt. Jesus' response is the same to you. Your past does not define who you are.
You've already been given a new life and a new identity with him and Jesus is just saying walk in it. Don't let the past define who you are. You've been given new life and a new identity with me and you've been given a group of people that you get to walk through life with that at some point have all raised their hands and said, Jesus, take care of my past. Give me a new life and identity in you. You don't have to keep that brick wall up. You get to share it and let it out.
You don't have to carry those burdens and that baggage anymore. And maybe you're a Christian in the room and this story doesn't necessarily resonate with you. You wouldn't say that you're wounded or that you're kind of haunted by your past. Jesus shows us very clearly what it looks like for us to relate to someone who's wounded. Their past does not define who they are. Jesus gives them new life and a new identity in him. which means that we sit and listen not in judgment or condemnation but in love and compassion.
It means we open up our homes and create environments where people can be open and share the mess of their lives. There are going to be times where you have to sacrifice money, time, resources. You're going to have to pour yourself out so that others can be filled up. That's exactly what Jesus did for this woman. And you get to do so by pointing them towards Jesus. Raz and Bianca are going to come back up and we're going to stand and sing a song in a second.
And I want you to respond however you feel like Jesus is leading you to. If you're not a Christian and you have this feeling, you have this sense, Matt, I want that to be true for me. I don't want the past to define who I am. I want this new life. I want this identity. The Bible says that you're to repent of your sin, which means that you're just willing to admit it and turn away from and you place your faith in Jesus for this to be true, that he can give you new life and new identity.
If you're a Christian in the room and you're wounded, as we stand and sing, if you just need to let it out, go grab somebody in our church family, go off to the side and talk to them about it. Let it out. Let them pray over you. Let them point you back towards the gospel. Some of you may need to make a phone call and talk to somebody during this time. And for all of us, we're going to stand and praise Jesus because our past does not have to define who we are.
We're given new life and a new identity in him. Let's pray. God, please let that be true in this room. I pray that that truth would sink into our hearts, that it wouldn't just be in our heads, that it would actually be in our hearts, that we would understand that that's true. And Holy Spirit, we pray that you would move in this time, that you would draw us close to you, help us to realize that our past doesn't have to define us. We're given new life and a new identity in you.
Amen.