Matt Chandler - The Wound and the Worry

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab those. John chapter four. We’re going to look at the first 26 verses of this chapter in the Gospel of John. There’s this picture of Jesus that I think you’ve seen, where Jesus has one hand over his heart. I should have found the picture, but he has his fingers in a peculiar way, and he’s kind of glowing, looking strangely white for a Jew. I don’t know if you’ve seen it; he has feathered white hair, and there’s something about that photo where he appears really ethereal. If I’m honest, he doesn’t seem quite helpful, and you get the sense that he is otherworldly and too soft for the hardness of the world in which you and I live. I’ve always despised that picture for multiple reasons; I probably hinted at some of those in this very brief introduction. However, this image of Jesus removes him, in a very real way, from the grit, grime, blood, and brokenness of your life, my life, and of life in a fallen world. When Jesus looks so clean, so pretty, and has an ethereal glow, we can learn some concepts about him that we don’t quite know how to apply to our everyday existence because he seems so otherworldly. This contrasts with what John is trying to teach us: Jesus is in the dirt, the mud, and the blood. He’s on the ground in the grime with us, which is one of the central points of the Gospel of John. It’s one of the major themes of the Bible: God with us, not in some ethereal, heavenly way, but right in the middle of the struggle. So, I genuinely believe that one of the reasons we struggle so badly to comprehend grace is that we’ve never really gazed at Jesus in the grit of life. What I want to try to do—I’ve been praying since I knew I was going to speak today—is to expand the circuits of your imagination this morning with the grace of God in Christ, dwelling amidst the brokenness and bloodiness of human experience. Know that these are my intentions; I’m not hiding anything. I want to stretch your imagination, creating new constructs in our minds for the vastness of the grace and mercy of God. We should feel a little anxious about that grace; it should seem a little too easy. So, I’m all in this morning; I sense your excitement. I preach from John 4; I love the whole book, but this chapter is especially awesome.

First, before we dive in, let’s address the core purpose of the coming of Jesus Christ: that he would enter into the brokenness of his creation and begin to make things new—not instantaneously, but genuinely. The primary complaint about Jesus is a valid question: Why would you kill a guy who keeps feeding you, performing miracles, raising the dead, and healing diseases? It’s because the mission of Christ was offensive to the fundamentalist. To simplify, the mission of Christ was offensive to those who derived their pride not from the power and grace of God, but from their own will and perceived superiority over others. Let’s look at some examples. In Luke chapter 5, while you’re sitting there in John 4, Jesus shows compassion and mercy to Levi, a tax collector. There was nothing more despicable than a tax collector, and I don’t even know how to explain its moral equivalent to us today. However, it was, in a real way, appropriate for them to be despised by their countrymen. Yet, Jesus often had dinner with them, visited their homes, and spent quality time with them. The religious elite could not comprehend this. Jesus extends mercy and grace to Levi, which certainly would not have been Levi’s experience in that culture. Here’s what we see in verse 30: The Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, «Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?» Jesus answered them, «Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.» Again, in Luke 19:10, Jesus clarifies his mission: «For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.» As we covered just a few weeks ago in John 3:17—while John 3:16 gets all the press, it’s John 3:17 that should make you shout for joy: «For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that we might be saved through him.»

So today, you and I have front-row seats to witness that radical grace being poured out in an unexpected place, at an unexpected time, to an unexpected person. With that said, let’s look at John 4. We’re going to read 26 verses—don’t panic; we did well at the 8:30 service, and I’ll stick to my usual time. So, starting in verse 1: Now, when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more…