Well, hey, hey. Good morning, Venture Church. If you don't know me, my name is Gray, and I'm part of the team over at the Hunt Club, and I get to be a part of the teaching team also. And so we are going to continue our series, "Jesus Is," and before we get into it, I need to set some groundwork, okay?

Or maybe even a little bit of foundation. Number one, this passage and this story, and what we're going to talk about this morning is something that, for whatever reason, has just been really important to me. It just really speaks to me. In fact, when we were talking about this series and where we were going and the "Jesus is," and I was like, "I know what I want to teach on.

I know the attributes, the character, the personality of Jesus that I want to talk about." And in fact, if you're a part of the Hunt Club staff, they get tired of me. About once a year, I'll go on a rant about this morning's "Jesus is" statement. And even the Hunt Club campus, about once a year, they'll hear me go on a rant about this particular "Jesus is" statement. But this morning it's actually a buy one, get one free.

All right? So if you came for the first time, hey, it's a special gift we got for you. You got two messages in one. It's like a combo meal this morning.

So we'll be looking at Jesus is two different things, but the two different things are actually one together. And so we're going to do that. And to get started, to set the foundation, I want to start with this statement right here, that who we believe Jesus is impacts how we live out our faith. Now, this is a principle, right?

And there's even a deeper principle that underlies this one, is that whatever you believe to be true impacts your actions, your behavior, right? So that's what we kind of know. So you take it outside of faith, that's always going to be true. What you believe to be true impacts how you act.

But within our faith, who we believe Jesus is impacts how we live out our faith. In honor of our other teaching pastor, one of the other teaching pastors, Greg, I want to quote C. S. Lewis.

All right? And this is like three weeks in a row. And C. S.

Lewis in his book "Mere Christianity," he calls it a trilemma, and he talks about the fact that we have to decide who Jesus is, who we believe Jesus is, and he lays out three different categories. He's either Lord, He is who He says He is, He's the Savior, the scriptures are accurate. He's either a lunatic, which means He's just crazy and He was just outside His mind, or He's a liar. And I think about, I know this is maybe a throwback for a lot of you younger folks, but back in the day, in the early 2000s, there was a guy named David Blaine that did all these street magic things.

He was a trickster, and so maybe Jesus was just a trickster. He's got us all fooled. But the reality is, the point that C. S.

Lewis is making is we've got to decide what we believe because everybody agrees that there was a guy named Jesus that walked this planet in the first century, and we've got to decide what we believe about Him. Is He Lord? Is He a lunatic? Was He just crazy?

Is He a trickster? Was He a liar? But if we even get within the Lord category, if you call yourself a Christ follower, even there we have to decide what we believe. I wrote down a couple comparisons, contrast, about Jesus.

Do you think that Jesus is caring or apathetic? Another one, do you think Jesus is present in your life, like He's active and He's involved, or do you think Jesus, do you believe Jesus just to be like, I know He died on the cross for me, but after that, He's like, "Peace out. I'll see you on the other side of the grave." He's absent of the daily going-ons of our lives. Then I thought, what if we did this little comparison game with our current teenage vernacular?

And so parents, don't worry, I'll help you. So do you think Jesus is legit or sus? Adults, that means suspicious. Okay?

Do you think Jesus is, I don't even know if I'm using this right, is rizz? That's charisma. Or ick? Yeah.

Icky, maybe. I don't know. I Googled it. And so even within this concept of believing that He is Lord, there's these different things that we can believe.

In fact, A. W. Tozer, a theologian, he died back in the 1960s, he says it this way, and this particular statement has been profound in my faith. "What comes to our minds," what we believe, "when we think about God is the most important thing about us." And what Tozer is getting at is that what we believe about God, what we believe about Jesus, man, it impacts our morals.

It impacts our behavior. It impacts our priorities. It impacts our relationships, how we relate to each other. It impacts everything.

When I say everything, it even impacts how others see Jesus. And so a complete statement would be this: Who we believe Jesus is impacts how we live out our faith. Man, it'd be so good if it just stopped there. How we live out our faith impacts what others believe about Jesus.

And maybe for some of you, the reason you've had such a hard time in faith is because of how you've seen others live out their faith. The flip side of it is, for all of us, if I asked you to tell me your testimony, at some point in your faith testimony, there's going to be somebody, a mom, a dad, a friend, a teacher, a coach, that stepped in, and you saw them live out their faith, and God used them to draw you closer to Him. And so that's the underlying principle, and so we're going to be in John 4. So if you have your Bibles, you can turn there.

John 4, pretty familiar story. We've just heard and read the complete story. What I'm going to do this morning is go back and pull out two different parts to look at our Jesus is statement and how it impacts that principle that we started with. We're going to pick up in John 4:7, and just a quick recap, Jesus is traveling from Judea back to Galilee, and the text says, if you were paying attention, the text says that He had to go through Samaria.

Now, what you need to know is that's not what Jesus had to do. In fact, Jewish people did not go through Samaria. They would take the long way home because they didn't want to be around Samaritans. And so the reality is that this was a divine appointment.

And so we're going to pick up. He's headed to Galilee through Samaria. "When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her," now they're at the well, " 'Will you give me a drink?' " And this is important. "His disciples had gone into the town to buy food." Okay, we'll come back to that.

They went to get some groceries. "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.' " Now, this is a battle that's been going on, a struggle, a tension that's been going on between Jews and Samaritans for nearly 700 years.

All right? And the Jewish people believe the Samaritans to be half breeds, to be less than. All the way back in like 700 BC, a nation came in, took over Jerusalem and Judea, and they exported... Exported.

They exiled a lot of the Jews, and then some stayed back and just kind of absorbed into, merged into the current culture of the idol worshipers. And so that's them, the Samaritans. And so the Jews have set themselves apart. And it says, "Jesus answered her, 'If you knew the gift of God, who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.' 'Sir,' the woman said," she's still thinking practically, " '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 this well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?' Jesus answered, 'Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again.'" Talking about the water from the well. " '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.' 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.' " So here's where we're going to make our first stop.

Jesus comes to a well. There's a Samaritan woman there. Now, here's what we know from the context. Number one, she's a Samaritan.

It's a big deal for Jesus as a Jewish individual to be speaking to a Samaritan. It's an even bigger deal for Jesus as a Jewish man to be speaking to a Samaritan woman. All right? And so Jewish men wouldn't even speak to Jewish women in public, much less alone, just the two of them.

In fact, when the disciples come back, and we won't get there, the disciples come back and they're like, "Hey, dude, what are you doing? Hey, you know we don't do that." And Jesus sets them right. But she's a Samaritan. She's a woman.

And then the fact that she's coming at noon. It's hot as Hades at noon. Why does she come and get water at noon? Culturally, they would come in the morning, the women would.

They would come together when it was nice and cool or in the evening. And so the fact that she's coming at noon tells us that she's got a reputation. That she's an outcast. She's, we'll find out later, a moral outcast, even amongst her people, who are viewed by the Jews to be outcasts themselves.

She is an outcast among outcasts. And Jesus in that text says, "I give you eternal life, and I give you living water," and that living water, it comes from deep within and it never runs out, and it always satisfies. In fact, if you've been a part of this series, he really kind of gives her the things that we've been talking about. He's offering her eternal life, which is forgiveness and acceptance.

He's telling her that he's the answer, like the thing that you've been looking for, I'm him. He'll tell her that later on. And that he's a provider, that what he's giving her, this living water, and it will always satisfy. It never runs out.

And here's the question when you read this encounter What has this woman done to deserve any of that from Jesus? She's a moral outcast. She's less than, culturally. What has she done?

And the answer is nothing. She has done absolutely nothing, and the Son of God approaches her, and has an encounter with her, has a conversation with her, and offers her eternal life. And any time you get something you don't deserve, we call that grace. A simple definition of grace.

Grace, getting something you don't deserve. She didn't deserve, culturally, she didn't even deserve for Jesus to be speaking to her. But not only is He speaking to her, He's offering her eternal life. And so we could say that Jesus is grace.

And listen, everybody loves this Jesus. When we think about Jesus, from an unchurched standpoint, an unbeliever standpoint, you're like, "Yeah, from what I do read, He is a pretty gracious dude." We all want this Jesus. Jesus is grace. He gives her grace.

He gives her something she doesn't deserve. But it's who He is at His core. And man, if we could just stop there, it would be nice. But Jesus doesn't.

So He offers her grace, and we pick back up. Look what He does. Verse 16, "He told her, 'Go call your husband and come back.'" Ruh-roh. "'I have no husband,' she replied.

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 now have is not your husband. What you have said is quite true.' 'Sir,' the woman said, 'I can see that you are a prophet.'" And we go, "Well, dang, Jesus." You went from, "Hey, I got some water for you. I can tell you're thirsty in a lot of ways, and this water right..." y'all get it later.

Yeah. "This water right here, man, what I'm offering you is going to satisfy all of that like no man ever could." And He goes from just offering this gracious thing to going, "Hey, I know what you did last night. I know what you did last week." And I go, "Dang." But the reality is what Jesus is doing is He is bringing truth into the conversation. And truth is simply this, truth is just a standard established by God.

But here's the reality. We want all of the grace. We're not so hyped up about the truth. But the thing is, without truth, grace is not necessary.

Without a standard. And listen, do me a favor. Let's walk through this logically. You're like, "I don't know if I believe in a truth with a capital T." And I've used this logic before, so you may beat me to it.

Have you ever fallen short of a standard somebody set for you? A teacher, a spouse. The answer's yes. A coach.

What about this? Have you ever fallen short of a standard you set for yourself? We call those New Year's resolutions. Yeah.

You made it to February. Yeah. Then if there is a holy God, aren't we safe to believe that we fall short of His standard? And so truth is a thing, but grace isn't necessary if there's not a standard, if we don't miss the mark.

And she cannot understand the gift that she's been given without understanding that He knows who she is, what she's done, what she's doing. Timothy Keller, theologian pastor, passed away several years ago. He says this. He says, "We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe." That's the truth.

But see, we don't want to hang out here. Yet at the very same time, we are more loved and accepted in Christ Jesus than we ever dared hope. And the thing is, that second part does not matter if the first part is not true. And so Jesus is grace and truth.

He's both. And we cannot, man, we cannot understand the grace that we're given until we embrace the reality of who we are. Take you back to the foundation, the statement we started with Who we believe Jesus is impacts how we live out our faith. How we live out our faith impacts what others believe about Jesus.

See, the problem is, we tend to, maybe not in words but in our actions, we tend to play the this or that game with truth and grace. You ever played the this or that game? Well, we're about to. So, let me just do this.

All of our campuses participate. I can see you. I can't. Let me give you two things.

How many of you like salty foods? Raise your hand. Right. You just got sodium coursing through your veins, don't you?

What about sweets? Yeah. It's like thick molasses going through your veins, right? Salty, sweet, we want to say this or that.

Let me see. I got a couple of them. This one's good. What about Disney or Dollywood?

How many of you are Disney people? Yeah, you're bougie. Yeah. That's fine.

What about Dollywood? Yeah. There's only a few of us. I'm Dollywood all day.

Me and Dolly, we go way back. What about, this is a good one, given that God has set the temperature outside to weeping and gnashing of teeth. And just a fun fact, when I was typing my message, y'all should have seen me trying to get the correct spelling of gnashing. It's not a word I use a lot.

Autocorrect was like, "Man, I got nothing." But let me set the context for you a little bit. You've been outside maybe working in the yard, it's hot, you're sweating, and you come in. How many of you would either grab sweet tea or lemonade? Who are my lemonade people?

You want a glass of lemonade. Yeah. What about my sweet tea people? Yeah.

And that tea is sweet, isn't it? Puts you in a sugar coma. Yeah. What about this?

We're talking about grace and truth because if we pull our faith out of it, we're all wired to gravitate one way or the other. How many of you would say you're truth people? Man, I just got to tell it like it is. Anybody like that?

Sure. Yes. Yeah. There's probably more of you in here.

You know I'm about to slam you. Yeah, you'd be like, "Listen, man, that's just who I am, Gray. I can't help it, man." You need to know that the rest of us think you're a jerk. All right?

But what about this? Hold up. How many of you are grace people? You're always leading with that Southern grace.

Bless their heart. Yeah. And we think you're soft. We all gravitate one way or the other, and so when it comes to Jesus as being grace and truth, we operate that way.

But here's the problem. If we're living out one or the other, man, we are giving people an incomplete version of Jesus. So, this is what it would look like. If you're truth-only Jesus, if that's where you like to hang out, you weaponize your faith.

And if you're not a Christ follower, you've probably run into folks like this. Well, they got this Bible, and they're just looking for somebody to thump over the head with it. But they never thump themselves. We weaponize our faith.

The message becomes clean up before you show up. You got to get it all together. You got to live the truth to a T before you come up in here. The problem with that is, is that it fosters hypocrisy because ain't none of us got it together.

That's right. None of us do. And so what we end up doing is wearing a mask. But listen, you grace-only people, you're like Jesus just wants to give everybody a hug.

We water down our faith. We water down God's word. And that has its own conclusions. If we do that, the message is, "Hey, man, you just do you." You got your truth, and you got your truth, and we got some truth over there, and we don't realize that that doesn't make sense by the definition of truth, that there is the truth.

And then when we do that- Yeah ... we miss the depth of God's love. Because just like the woman at the well, we can't fully appreciate what God, through His son Jesus, has done for us if we don't realize just how broken we are. Amen. So, we say we've got a solution.

Jesus is grace and truth. That must mean a half measure of each. I'll call this Arnold Palmer Jesus. Yeah.

And for all you Chick-fil-A people, it's a Sunjoy. All right. Sunjoy. And we say, hey, that's what He's after.

That's how Jesus lives this out. It was like, I'll give a little bit of grace, about 50%, and then we'll give a little bit of truth. And man, and for some of you, it's not like Arnold Palmer, it's like the Twisted Tea. The same difference.

You can lay off that. And we think this is what He means 50/50. Here's the problem with 50/50, because this seems like a solution, but when we live 50/50, that means we get to choose when we give truth and when we give grace. And let me tell you how you work, same way I work.

Boy, I give grace to myself all the time, but man, I'm going to hammer you with truth. Yeah. And this is incomplete. This is not what Jesus did for this woman.

John, in the very first chapter, and it's actually like a poem. John, chapter one, he's reflecting back as he's writing down all that he's experienced with Jesus, and in verse 14 he says this. He says, "The Word," now this means Jesus, and we don't have time to unpack this, but the reason Jesus used the Word, which is the Greek word logos, to reference Jesus is because to the two audiences that were listening, the Jews and the Hebrews, this word meant two different things for them, interpreted two different ways, and for him to connect it to Jesus blew everybody's mind. That's another message.

That's not the word I want to talk about. The Word, Jesus, became flesh. In other words, he came to heaven. The message translation says he moved into the neighborhood.

"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." He says, "We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father," and everybody say this word. Full. Full of grace and truth. Not a half measure of each, but that both of them, that he fully brings to every situation, to every relationship, to every sin, to every mistake you've ever made.

He brings all of the truth and all of the grace, which means he fully lets you know where you are. He doesn't hold back on the truth. One pastor said it this way, and I wish I would've come up with it, Jesus never watered down the truth. It's not Arnold Palmer.

But he never turned down the grace. It was a full measure of both all the time. And listen, as Christians, this is why I'm so passionate about this. When we try to go truth only or grace only or Arnold Palmer, we're giving people an incomplete version of Jesus, and it's not one that they want to be drawn to.

It pushes them away. But listen, if you're here and you're not a Christ follower, this is who he is. The Apostle Paul, Romans chapter five, verse eight says this. He says, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this." Here's the truth.

"While we were still sinners." While we were sinning. He's not even saying, it's not like this was something that you did in the past. This is your present. We were still sinners, and Christ died for us.

That is the grace. I was trying to think this morning how to put this into a modern-day scenario or something. But the while we were still sinners, it's as if you're robbing a bank, I'm robbing a bank, and the judge, while you're robbing the bank goes, "You're not even done robbing the bank now." He goes, "I'm pardoning them." You've done nothing. I've done nothing.

It's grace. But that grace doesn't mean a thing until we embrace the truth of who we are without Jesus. And another passage in Romans, I'm going to close with this, Romans chapter six. The Apostle Paul again writing about Jesus and truth and grace.

And he says, "For the wages of sin is death." That's the truth. Then here comes the grace. "But the gift of God is eternal life." Christ follower, how do you see Jesus? And how is that impacting the way you live out your faith and how others see him?

And the person kicking the tires on faith, now I want you to know, he knows everything about you. Just like he did that woman at the well, he doesn't turn his face away, he doesn't turn his back on you, he doesn't walk away. He offers you grace, and that's what makes it so amazing. Because he fully knows and he still fully loves.

And that's the invitation. Let's pray. Father God, how easily we as Christ followers forget why we even need your grace. God, remind us of that this morning.

And Father, I pray specifically right now for those that do not know you, and they've seen incomplete pictures of you, of your Son, that this morning, Father, they would see that you know us completely and you love us so much that you sent your Son to cover all the places where we don't live up to the truth. God, we thank you that you are a good God. And we pray these things in your Son's name. Amen.