Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: In just a moment, the incomparable pastor Mike Meeks is going to come deliver the message.
But first, I wanted to introduce you again. If you missed the first couple weeks, we're going all the way through the Book of John.
So immediately after Advent. Over the last four years, we've been jumping right into a gospel that takes us all the way to Easter. And this is week three in the Gospel of John. And we have to remember as we read through this, that John is writing this gospel as an old man trying his best in a very pastoral and fatherly way to teach people the essentials of why Jesus came and lived and died for us. John, chapter 4, and verse 1 says. Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. And so he left Judea and he went back once more to Galilee.
And now he had to go through Samaria. And so he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground where Jacob had given to his son Joseph. And Jacob's well was there. And Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well, and it was about noon.
And when a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, will you give me a drink? His disciples had gone into town to buy food. And the Samaritan woman said to him, you are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.
How can you ask me for a drink? For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. And Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asked you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.
And, sir, the woman said, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock. And Jesus answered, everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again.
But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.
Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
And the woman said to him, sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.
And he told her, go call your husband and come back.
I have no husband, she replied. And Jesus said to her, you are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is you've had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband.
What you've just said is quite true, sir. The woman said, I can see that you're a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain. But you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.
Woman Jesus replied, believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father. Neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know. For salvation is from the Jews.
Yet a time is coming, and has now come, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. And the woman said, I know that Messiah called Christ is coming, and when he comes, he will explain everything to us. And then Jesus declared, I the one speaking to you. I am he.
Just then, the disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, what do you want? Or why are you talking with her? And then leaving her water jar, the woman went back to town and said to the people, come and see a man who has told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah? And they came out of the town and made their way toward him. So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them. And he stayed just two days. And because of his words, many more became believers. And they said to the woman, we no longer believe just because of what you said. Now we've heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the savior of the world. This is the word of the Lord.
Lord Jesus, bring us this word in spirit and in truth. In Jesus name we pray.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: What kind of lens you see God through is important. It's like, you know, glasses.
You know, sometimes they. They just need a cleaning, sometimes an adjustment. Sometimes you need a whole new prescription.
I hope that you would be open today to hear what I have to say. That might bring some adjustment for you to consider. Would you sort of, you know, open your heart just a little bit and, you know, you don't really know me, but I hope that you would be open to maybe some new ideas about this. A recurring theme in the gospels is this theme of truth and grace.
It shows up again and again, and I believe that truth is a gateway to grace. But it can sometimes be uncomfortable.
It can also create a bit of a messy Tension.
As we examine some of this, there's a tension because we have a bias. A bias is just a natural tendency to lean one way or another. A classic example would be there are dog people and there are demonic people, right?
We. We each have a natural bias toward being grace people, or we lean toward being truth people.
We're all going to have a tendency in this. But Jesus is fully grace, and Jesus is fully truth.
In week one, we looked at John 1:14. It said this.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Grace says you're forgiven.
Truth says you're accountable.
Grace says that you're accepted.
Truth says you got some things that need to change.
There's a tension because of our grace or truth bias.
We just read this encounter in John 4 with the Samaritan woman.
If you're new to the Bible, there's a lot to this that I'm not going to get into.
But this tension between Jews and Samaritans goes back way back. Before this encounter.
The Samaritans were descended from Jews who intermarried with the local idolatrous peoples of the land. And so they were considered half breeds. They were considered traitors to the Jews.
And that creates a tension.
I'll just touch on a couple of verses here that we already read, you know, where Jesus says, go call your husband.
I have no husband. Well, you're right.
You've had five. And the guy you're shacking up with today, he's not even your husband.
Whoa, Jesus. That's a whole lot of truth, you know, with this woman you just met.
You know, how would you like that to be an encounter you have at church? Turn and greet to the person next to you, say, hey, by the way, I can look into your soul and see that you have issues.
So glad I came.
What does she do, though?
All this truth comes her way, she changes the subject. Let's talk about your preferred worship style.
Well, I can see that you're a prophet. Our ancestors worship over here. The Jews say, we have to worship over there.
There's a tendency that we all share to dodge and deflect uncomfortable truth.
Give you a hypothetical situation. Let's just say that I'm having a conversation with my wife and she points out some small, insignificant flaw in me.
I'm likely to deflect that by saying, yeah, but you leave all the cupboard doors open when we're cooking.
Much more important Than any minor flaw I might have.
You deflect.
She goes on, here woman said, I, I know that Messiah called Christ is coming. When he comes, he's going to explain it all to us. And Jesus said, I'm it.
I am he.
She deflects. And then Jesus goes on knowing fully who she is and says, you're in, come in to this grace.
I know you're the Messiah.
And yet he offers her this living water, acceptance, a grace so pervasive that even she's welcome.
She stops deflecting. She begins to get caught up in this and then goes to spread the word.
And then all the people come out and there's this great line, we no longer believe just because of what you said.
Now we have heard for ourselves and we know that this man really is the savior of the world. You see, you can't have this connection because someone else had a connection.
It's personal. You've got to have your own. You've got to come to your own encounter with Jesus of fully truth and fully grace.
Jesus speaks truth and then dispenses grace that washes over the whole town and the region and the world and time.
Well, if you're a note taker, you can write this down. We need to hold on to both grace and truth.
When you look at various encounters that Jesus has with people in scripture, his goal of those encounters is always redemptive.
He spoke truth and he spoke grace, but the goal was and is not to punish, reject or shame.
That's not what he is about. That's not always my goal in an encounter with someone.
Sometimes I'm in an encounter with someone and it gets tense and I'm going to give them some truth and then I want to win, I want to convince, I want to show them how I am.
If I lean toward grace, it can be difficult.
The truth to receive the truth, it can sometimes be hard.
And if I lean toward truth, I can end up being judgmental, self righteous and not ever extending grace.
I see this tension expressed when we talk about sin and judgment in sermons.
Paul tells us not to judge those outside of the church and we like that. And then he goes on, he tells us to judge each other inside the church and we don't like that as much.
That's a bit like a root canal with no novocaine. It's like, ugh, too hard.
When I pastored in San Diego, there was a situation where one of our volunteers, good looking single guy, early 30s, and he was beginning to hit on some of the gals in the church. He's single. Good job. Go ahead.
But then he pressed it. Go on some dates and began to pressure women for sexual. And some of these women were coming back and saying, hey, this guy's, you know, a problem.
And so I ended up in my office in a meeting with him and outlined the situation.
You know, we've had this many people coming. This is pretty much, you know, it's true, right?
And then said, okay, now, here's the guardrails.
Here's the path back. You're not going to be a volunteer. Here's the. Here's the path of accountability.
Here's what we're going to require of you in order to remain in this fellowship. It's going to be safe for everyone here.
And at one point, at the end of this, he folded his arms and he looked at me, he says, I feel like you're judging me here today.
And I said, well, you know, the reason that it feels that way is because I'm judging you here today.
That's why it. That's why it feels so much like that.
And, you know, it was his opportunity to embrace truth because there was grace there, too.
But he couldn't embrace truth. He wanted to excuse the truth and dodge the truth and deflect grace in the process.
Grace and truth are to be held in balance. And it's not easy.
It's tough. There's this messy tension.
It can look inconsistent and it can look unfair, sometimes confusing, especially at home.
Some of us grew up in grace and truth homes generally. Grace was mom, truth was dad.
You probably know what I mean.
Some of you grew up with way too much grace, which is why your clothes don't match today.
Some of you grew up with way too much truth, and that's why you're still angry at the stupid driver on the way to church today.
Can't let it go.
Relax.
If you're just truth, there's always going to be something missing.
And if you're just grace, there's always going to be something missing.
We all have to deal with our own tendency, our own bias in this.
I like verses that lean toward truth when we're talking about you.
And I like verses that lean toward grace when we're talking about me.
I have a bias.
John 1:17 says, for the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
In Jesus, God fully reveals himself.
It's in this new covenant that. That comes to all of us when Jesus shows up.
And it's not like the law is truth and Jesus comes with grace. No, the law sets this picture of what's needed. And then Jesus comes full of truth, full of grace.
That's what he's about. The full measure, the full embodiment of God. Let me give you a couple examples of Jesus extending grace and truth and some other encounters. You can look these up on your own. In Luke, chapter five, Jesus calls Matthew to join the team.
He's a tax collector. He's a traitor to the Jewish people. And a couple of the people on the team already, the Jesus disciple team, are zealots. They're revolutionaries. They want to attack and defeat the Romans. And now Jesus is inviting one of the enemy into their camp.
That had to create some tension.
It's like a family reunion when you're hoping that one uncle won't come.
We don't want this case. He's a problem.
He creates all kinds of tensions. And then what are my old friends going to say if they see me hanging out with this guy?
This is going to create a problem for me and my other relationships.
They're invited to Matthew's house.
He's going to invite all of his friends.
That's a bigger problem.
Jesus, we're going to be hanging out. There could be prostitutes and other tax collectors.
What are people going to say?
Are they going to say, jesus, you condone their behavior because you're hanging out with them.
You're. You're putting your stamp of approval by lending your presence to this?
And Jesus might have responded something like, what do you think I'm here for? He does when he says this in Luke 19, the son of man came to seek and save the lost.
He was always looking for a red, redemptive opportunity in every encounter.
And then he's crucified between two thieves.
You know, one of them is mocking Jesus from the cross, saying, you know, do something here, Mr. Miracle man, get us off these crosses.
And the other guy says, you know, shut up. I'm paraphrasing.
Shut your trap, shut your pie hole, because we're getting what we deserve and seeing and embracing his truth.
And then he says, jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
And you would expect grace. Jesus to say, don't be so hard on yourself. You're a pretty good guy.
But he doesn't.
Today you'll be with me in paradise.
Wow. Wait, what?
That guy gets in and there's like no time left on the clock, and he's going to get in.
Jesus, that doesn't seem fair. I mean, he can't rededicate his life to Christ. I'm going to follow you the rest of my life. He's got like 20 minutes.
He can't go anywhere. He can't do anything.
Doesn't seem quite fair to me. This is just an aside and that Jesus says, yes, you.
You who you're getting what you deserve here.
The undeserving. You'll be with me in paradise.
And then there's a woman in John, chapter eight, looking forward in this series, who is caught in the act of adultery.
And so it's a setup.
They want to put Jesus in a situation where he has to go against the law of Moses, which is if catching this woman in the act of adultery means she has to be stoned, they're pretty confident Jesus isn't going to endorse that.
And so they want to trap him, say, see, he is not the real deal.
He doesn't obey the law of Moses. And by the way, where was the guy that was caught in the act of adultery? Is he like a track star and got away? I don't know.
It's a setup.
And so they bring this woman, and they're saying, okay, what should we do?
And then he says, he's kneeling there in the dust and he's just writing. I don't know, who knows what he's writing?
Never, never told.
But at one point, he comes up with something to do.
Just, okay, whoever's going to throw the very first stone, let it be someone who's never looked at a woman lustfully, never even had that in your heart. That's who's qualified.
And it says that they began to quietly walk away, beginning with the oldest.
Well, the fact is, we need grace to embrace truth.
His condemners, or her condemners are forced to look in the mirror first, and they walk away.
And now it's just her and Jesus.
And he says, where are they? Jesus straightened up and asked her, woman, where are they?
Has no one condemned you?
She says, no one, sir.
Then neither do I condemn you. Jesus declared, go now and leave your life of sin.
Well, wait, which way is it?
You're not condemned or you're a sinner?
Yes, yes.
Fully truth. Fully grace.
I don't condemn you. Now go. Leave your life of sin.
Did he have to bring up the sin part?
Yes.
Then how can he say that she's not condemned? Because he's fully truth and fully grace.
That can be hard when you have to deal with some truth.
As a new believer, I was a freshman at Lane Community College, aspiring to greatness with lots of Pe.
And I was a bellboy at the Holiday Inn in Eugene, and I'm a new believer. And at one point, I heard a sermon about, you know, some truth and really looking at your life. And I realized, you know, I need to repent of something. I've been stealing from the Holiday Inn.
Towels, washcloth sheets, and giving them away to my friends. I'm like, bed bathing beyond, you know, and, yeah, and I'm realizing I need to repent. And. And so I said, you know, forgive me, Lord. This is wrong. I'm done with that. But there was this thing that said, you need to tell someone. And I thought, well, and I'm thinking, trying to figure, is this the Lord? Is this God?
And I felt very strongly, you need to go to your boss and confess. I went, well, that's obviously not the Lord.
That. No good could come from that.
And. But it just continued. And I'm 18 and I'm scared to death. And by the way, my boss is a guy named Tex Hager. And he looks like the name. He was about this tall, but he was just this massive, you know, missing link hairy dude, you know.
And he was a local boxing promoter, too.
His nose was, like, all over his face from his own fights.
And now I gotta stand in front of this guy. So I finally get the courage up and say, like, Mr. Hager, may I speak with you for a moment? You know, it's like. And he was always smoking his cigar. Think Yosemite Sam, you know, it's just like, going back and forth across his mouth and.
And he goes, what do you want?
I said, well, I just want you to know that. That I recently became a. A Christian. I'm following Jesus now. And before I could go any further, he goes, why the hell should I care?
And he's not making this easy.
And so I continued on. I said, well, I just need to tell you that I was stealing. I stole some towels and some sheets and some things, and I was giving them to my friends.
And I just need to confess this to you, tell you I'm sorry and it won't happen again.
And nothing. He was just silent, just looking at me and looking down and back looking down. I mean, a long time, just him and the cigar flying around.
And finally I looked. I said, well, am I fired? He goes, ah, what the hell? You're probably the only one I can trust around here now.
And not long after that, I got a raise and a promotion.
If you're stealing from your employer and you hear this and you decide to do likewise. And you lose your job and go to jail.
That's on you. Okay? Obviously, God loves me more.
Grace doesn't mean everything gets fixed, everything's okay, no consequence.
Grace means that truth no longer has to be hidden.
Grace kills the weeds of secrecy and shame that want to take root in our lives.
We need grace to be able to embrace truth. And the flip side is, we need truth to embrace grace.
We need truth to embrace grace. So here's my question for you. Can something be true even if you don't like it?
See, we hear phrases like, well, that's not my truth. Well, but if it's a fact, who cares?
Your truth is stupid, okay? No matter how much you feel it, you can feel it so strong.
You see, truth is truth.
Can something be true even if you don't like it?
Yeah, it can.
Growing up in Eugene, we lived in a 12 foot wide by 50 foot long trailer.
I'm Catholic, so I've got like a million brothers and a sister.
And at one point, everyone that I knew in the world had a color tv. We had this old black and white with rabbit ears and it was just aluminum foil. We tried everything. It was awful.
One day we get a phone call from this place that no longer exists called Mark's Trading Post.
And it's like, yes, we want to let you know that Evelyn Meeks, my mom, has won a new color television.
And this is the promotion. It's a big deal. And you have 30 minutes to get to this entrance at Mark's Trading Post and pick up your new color television. Well, it was my brother Ray and I were there and my mom, and we're like, oh my gosh, we lost our minds.
Car tv. We're gonna get a car tv. It's like, mom, she's a slow driver. And it's like, we gotta go. We've only got 30 minutes. Gonna take 20 minutes to get there. It's 10 miles away.
And so we pile in the car and we're going down there. We go back to this one entrance and it's really amazing because my brother John was standing there and we're like, huh, what's going on? You know, and it's like we got. Where's the tv?
There's no tv.
It was my brother John on the phone.
He wanted to ride home.
There's no tv.
It's gone.
Can something be true even if I don't like it?
Yeah, there's no tv.
And you know, Grace would have just opened the car door, let John in, and we all Just laugh at what a great, great moment.
Truth locks the doors, drives away and makes him walk the 10 miles.
We were able to bring truth and grace together where we just pulled forward when he reached for the handle, pulled forward and did that several times and finally let him in. The blending of truth and grace.
If you're not willing to embrace truth, if I'm not willing to embrace truth about myself, then I deflect grace.
Can something be true? And if I don't like it?
It's one thing about a color tv, it's another when there's great hurt or disappointment, why weren't they healed?
Why did he leave?
When we have those kinds of hurts and then we hear God is good all the time, how do we embrace both of those realities?
Now, some of you were brought up in truth heavy churches.
You know, the Bible was used as a weapon to beat the truth into you.
Some of you grew up in a church where verses, they did gymnastics around the stuff that was too truthy, a little uncomfortable.
If you want to know what Jesus meant by what Jesus said, you watch how Jesus loved. How did he love?
He called sin sin.
And then he paid for it.
And then having paid for it, he says, I don't condemn you.
The truth is you're a sinner, but the grace is you're not condemned.
Sin has already cost all of us and grace is our only way home.
It's the truth.
John echoes this grace truth theme. In second John, he says, this grace, mercy and peace which come from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Son of the Father, will continue to be with us who live in truth and love.
A number of years ago, I was at a pastors conference in Indiana.
It was a very big church in a very small town. Their airport was really small. At the end of the conference, all these people are trying to get home. And there was all these delays.
I sat down next to a guy, I'm like, nothing I can do. I'm going to read a book and turn. Hi, my name is Mike. My name is Rick. He was all just tense about it and I'm going, you know, relax. He goes, I gotta get home. So, well, where are you trying to get to? He says, miami.
And I said, well, why do you have to get home?
And he said, well, I.
And he tells me this story. I pastored this church and many, many years in this church, it was just like flat line. I didn't know if the church was even going to survive. And then the last several years have just been this amazing miraculous Ministry, the church has been just growing exponentially.
It's so much fun. It's great.
Then my daughter, who was a freshman in college, came home a little early, before break, and she said, daddy, I need to talk to you.
And I said, I'm headed to a meeting. I've got to go. And, you know, we'll catch up, you know, before you leave.
And a couple more days, couple more days. Finally, she walks into his office and she goes, I need to talk. He goes, I'm on the phone and basically going to brush her off again. And she falls on her knees and starts to cry.
He hangs up and goes.
Kneels down and says, what is going on? She goes, daddy, I'm pregnant.
I am so glad for what is going on here at the church, and I don't want to mess it up for you.
And I'm going to go away so that I'm not an embarrassment to you.
I don't want people to leave because of this. And it was one of those moments, what you say next matters.
And he said, if they don't want you, they can't have me.
And so sorry.
He starts crying, telling me the story. And so I didn't want him to feel strange, so I was crying with him.
And he says, I've got to get home because the women in the church are throwing a baby shower.
Gonna be big. I gotta be there.
And, you know, so it's like, amazing. Well, years go by, I end up having a conversation with this guy again.
And he sends me a picture of this little girl.
Says, hey, Mike, this is the baby from the baby shower.
She's 12.
Her name is Autumn, and she's my best friend.
He brought truth and grace together in a beautiful way.
And I want to encourage you to have the courage, be encouraged to open yourself fully to truth and open yourself fully to grace. You can't have one without the other.
But we get so fearful, we try to hide cover instead of running to truth because we know we're going to encounter grace.
In the past, we've needed massive amounts of truth and grace.
In the future, we're going to need massive amounts of truth and grace.
Are you open to God's truth today?
For you? Are you open to God's grace? For you today, he came full of truth and grace. In a moment, we're going to receive communion.
It's a great moment to embrace both.
Is there anything you need to take to the cross? As we receive this bread and this cup?
Don't miss the moment. Don't miss the opportunity. Would you pray with me, Jesus?
Thank you.
Thank you that you bring truth to us so that we can receive the grace you're extending.
Help us Lord, to trust both. In Jesus name, Amen.
