Marcus Mecum - Winning In Relationships
John 4, I'll start reading in verse 13. And a familiar story that maybe you've heard before, and I wanna use it to talk to you about answers for failed relationships. Answers for failed relationships. "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'. The woman said to Jesus, 'sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty, so I don't have to keep coming here to draw water'. And he told her, 'go and call your husband, and come back'. And she says, 'i have no husband'. Jesus said to her, 'you are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you're with now is not your husband. What you have said is quite true'".
This woman had been married five times, she's on her sixth relationship, and she has given up. Jesus shows up and he does not introduce himself as the Son of God or as Messiah. He doesn't introduce himself as the Savior of the world or maybe even like healer or restorer. He introduces himself to her as counselor, marriage counselor specifically, and he's here to give her relationship advice. A lot times we think about God and he's just there to fix spiritual issues, spiritual problems, and then we block him out of our relationships, we block him out of our marriages. But Jesus shows up to a single girl that needs marriage counseling.
So, if you're single, you need to hear this message. If you're married, you need to have this message. If you're a young person, this message is for you. She's devastated by her past relationships. She's been broken. She's been hurt over and over again. And maybe you can relate to her. Maybe you can look back over your life and think to yourself, "Man, I've just had one broken relationship, failed relationship, after another. One after another after another". Imagine, like this woman, that you are in this service and you look back over your history and you think, "Man, I really wish God would have intervened in this time". Or "He would have shown up in this relationship". Maybe you're even here and you're saying, "It's too late. It's too far gone. Too much has happened. There's no way you can fix the things that have happened in my past".
And if you look at the situation, she would have the same exact response. She's thinking to herself, "Man, I wish you would have showed up during the first marriage. At least, shown up in the second". He's waited for five marriages to fail and finally he shows up and he walks up to this woman devastated by relationships and he says, "If you knew who I was, you would ask me for a drink and you would never thirst again". That's a big statement. Now, I did not know this until just recently, but I was with my kids, and I was mentioning somebody that, you know, they'd know of and they said, "Oh, that girl is thirsty". Well, I didn't know what that meant. I'm like, "What do you mean 'she's thirsty'"? And evidently, this means that you're desperate for a relationship of some type.
Well, I didn't know that, but Jesus 2000 years ago knew how to preach a sermon to all you thirsty men and women, which by the way, this is a sermon for the men, too. So, he shows up and he wants to deal with root cause of what's happening in her life. It's not a man problem. She has a thirst problem. She doesn't have a marriage problem, she doesn't have a relationship problem, she has a spiritual problem. And the problem is this, if you reject God, you're going to have relationship problems. It works no other way.
Imagine Jesus shows up with this girl and she's trying to explain to him why it's all gone wrong and her excuses and her reasons, and she's going back through, you know, "The first one, I was just too young. I didn't really know what I was doing. The second one, you know, I was still a little bit immature, and was, you know, trying to find a good, nice person, but there was no spark in the relationship. And oh, the third one, that was one we really shouldn't count because I was in Vegas, I had too much to drink, and I woke up and I found out that, you know, Elvis had married us the night before. And then, the fourth one, you know, it was a old flame from back in the day, and he had a bunch of kids, and my kids, and we tried to blend them together. That got crazy. That didn't work out. And then, the fifth one, you know, I was just so hurt, and he was so hurt. It was failed from the beginning. And then, the sixth one", truth is she'd given up, but she didn't know how to not depend on a man.
She didn't know how to not be validated by the opposite sex. She didn't know how to live life in a committed way, but she didn't know how to go at life because she was lonely. So now she's got relationships, but they're not committed relationships. So, we don't have the details of her failures. You have the details of your failures. He left the details out on purpose because the details are not important to God. If you're going from relationship to relationship to relationship, no, you do not have a relationship issue, you have a rejecting God issue in your life. Listen to how marriage was created. It was created first in eden. It wasn't just Adam and Eve in eden. It was Adam, eve, and God in eden.
Somebody said it takes two to make a marriage work, it takes three. If you leave God out, you cannot have a successful marriage. So, God created marriage between a man and a woman in eden which means paradise. So, marriage wasn't created in a gauntlet. It wasn't created in a torture chamber. Anybody that laughed is not here with their spouse. The rest of you wanted to laugh but you can't laugh. Eden means beauty, abundance, peace, delight, pleasure. It's sensual. How many of us would define marriage as paradise. How is it possible to have a marriage in paradise? I'm not saying you're living it, I'm saying, is it possible?
Well, there's only one way to get there and that is God created it and the way that Adam and Eve lost paradise is they didn't reject one another first, they rejected God first. And because they rejected God, then they rejected one another, and it wasn't too long before they lost eden. The Bible says it like this that, "When God puts two people together, let no man put asunder". "Let no man put as under". So, marriage, when God brings two people together it belongs on God's level. It's not man made. And the mistake we make is we take what God has put together and we put it as under. In other words, we take a God level thing and we put it on a man level.
But when God brings two people together, which by the way, if you said "Yes", you said "I do", you walked to an altar, you are married, you could say that you did everything to lead up to that point, but once you went to the altar and you invited God into that marriage and you made a vow to God, whether you know this or not, a supernatural miracle took place. I don't know how it took place, I don't know how it looks to God in heaven, but the Bible says, two souls, two people become one flesh. In the eyes of God, at the moment you said "I do", God looks down and those two individual people become one in the eyes of God. It is a supernatural miracle.
And so, the second you said "I do" now that relationship is on a God level. You can try to treat it like a man made thing, you can try to treat it like legal papers, you can try to treat it that way if you would like, but it belongs on a God level, and let what God has put together no man put asunder. If you reject God, you'll have relationship issues. Quiet church. Jesus tells this woman, "Your thirst will never, never be quenched by a man. Your thirst will never be quenched by another human being". I've been serving God for 31 years, I'm the pastor of a church and I can tell you that we all need this message. No human being, not even your spouse can quench the thirst we're talking about. It's a spiritual thirst. The most important matter in every marriage is your personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
One of the things that we say at 7 hills a lot is the most important thing you can bring to 7 hills is your personal relationship with Jesus. More important than your giving, or your serving, or your attendance, or your commitment, or whatever, the most important thing you can bring to 7 hills is your personal relationship with Jesus Christ, 'cause if you don't got that, all the other stuff is gonna be flaky anyway. But if you pursue him first, and in your marriage it works the same way. The most important thing you can bring into that marriage is not all the things that we attach ourselves to, all the things that we say that we need, but it's two people together going down a road where they're pursuing the things of God in their life.
And it's not that it makes it easy, and it's not that it is trouble free, but somehow on that road, God brings the right relationships, God brings the right people, God brings the right ideas, God brings the right solutions, God brings the right attitudes. But if you pick a road where you're just doing your best on your own, and trying to get your needs met hoping they'll meet your needs, then down that road is all kinds of confusion, is all kinds of chaos, is all kinds of bitterness, is all kinds of disappointment because your expectations aren't being met. And then, oh yeah, down that road is compromise. Down that road is wrong relationships, you name it. And that road ends usually in divorce.
So, several things I want you to see in this story that Jesus gives us. Number one, let's look at his compassion. Look at how compassionate Jesus is towards failure. He's so compassionate towards this woman. And I love this because when Jesus offers forgiveness, when we look at the cross for example, he's hanging there, he's bleeding, he's dying, and he says, "Forgive them". And then, he gives the answer. Why? "They do not know what they're doing". "Forgive them, for they know not what they do". Can I tell you the reason you need to have great compassion on your spouse is they do not know what they're doing. They don't know.
You think, "Well, they have to know. They have to know that hurts me. I've told them that hurts me. They have to know. They have to know that disappoints me. They have that that lets me down. I've explained to them over and over and over, 'i need you to do this and you're not doing it'. I've dada dada dada dada". They know that they've got a Hammer maybe. They know they've got the nail. They know they're putting your hand on a cross. They know they're crucifying. They may know that, but they don't know what's driving them to do it. You forgive them, you have compassion on them for they know not what they do.
So, you can count on Jesus being full of compassion towards your failures, towards your marriage mistakes and relationships. Why? Because he knows we don't get it. He knows we don't get one another. He knows that men try to get women or women try to get men. If you go online, you can just see one little reel after another of men and women across the table trying to convince each other about what the other, you're never going to understand them. They're never gonna understand you. You're not supposed to do that. I don't need to understand Sarah. I need to pursue God and have a heart focused on God and just know the differences are there. They're supposed to be there. Somehow we don't compete with one another. Somehow we complete one another in our difference.
So, if you've been through a broken relationship, you're not a second class citizen. If you've been through a failed marriage, you're not less than, you're not lower than, you're not someone that needs to look at yourself and think, "Man, there's no way I can move forward because of all the things that I've been through".
You need to understand that God knows what you've been through, and that God has compassion for you, and that he loves you, and that he knows the pain, he knows the hurt, he knows the rejection, he knows the brokenness, he knows your mistakes, he knows your failures whether anybody else does, he knows. He's intimately involved in all of that, but yet he's not given up on you and he's not here to judge today, he's here to be what he's always been and that's the great physician that can restore, and can heal, and can renew all things no matter what the history looks like.
Two reason you can count on the compassion of God. Number one, you can count on God's compassion because the devil hates marriage. The Bible says God hates divorce because he wants a godly seed in the earth. So, if God hates divorce, the devil loves divorce. If God loves marriage, the devil hates marriage. So, there will always be an attack on marriage. There will be an attack on the biblical bringing together of a man and a woman under the authority of God's word. There'll always been an attack because the devil hates marriage 'cause he's after a godly seed in the earth. He's after your family. He's after the next generation.
The second way you can know, or reason you can know that God is compassionate is because he knows we're ignorant. He knows, let me just talk to the men real quick. He knows we're never gonna get it. Never gonna get it. And he knows that. Most of us have never seen a successful relationship. Most of us have never seen a successful marriage. And so, this is not a story where God is trying to bring up all the flaws of a woman, bring up her history, bring up her past, pull all the bones out of the closet, and just show the whole world, this is a story of compassion. This is a story of how God loves us, and he created marriage, and he's the only one that can make marriage work.
And so, Jesus said, "If you'll drink of me, you'll never thirst again". What a statement. "If you'll drink of me, all those things you're thirsty for, all those things you think you need, all those things you think you're missing out on, all those areas you're dried up, and empty, and you're not satisfied, and you're not all those things," he said, "You can try to look for it in the opposite sex if you want, but you're gonna keep coming back thirsty. But if you'll drink of me, you'll never thirst again". Imma help you out real quick. If you'll clap, everybody around you will think you get it. If you do this, everybody's like, "Oh, it's them. It's them right there".
I'm playing around. Y'all okay? You feeling good? You alright? Is it "Amen" or "Oh me"? Which one is it? This is why a relationship with Jesus is the most crucial issue in a marriage. We all have four basic needs. First, we all need acceptance. Not "Am I thin enough? Am I tall enough? Am I pretty enough? Am I rich enough? Am I funny enough? Am I this enough or that enough"? Acceptance is "On the worst day of my life, I want to be loved. In the worst season of my life, when I make the worst mistakes of my life, I want to be loved". And only God can do that. Only Jesus can be faithful to love you and I through every possible circumstance of life.
Paul said in Romans 8, he asked a profound question and that is, "Can anything separate me from the love of God"? And he answers his rhetorical question by saying, "Nothing. Nothing can separate us from the love of God". He says, "Not demons or angels, not life, not death, not things present or things in the future, no powers, no governmental, you name 'em. No power can separate me from the love of God". He actually goes to this extreme. "Nothing in all creation. If you can see it, touch it, grab it, feel it, smell it, sense it," he says, "Nothing in all of creation can separate you from the love of God". And that is a basic need in how God created you is you need acceptance, you need love, and only God can give you that.
Number two, we need identity. Identity is the thing that says, "You're unique. You're here and it matters". Identity. Psalms 139 says God's thoughts towards us are so numerous that they started before we were even in the womb. And they were so detailed that the way they laid out our life is God has already pre thought and preordained all the works. Our job is just to walk in 'em. So, every step I take if I'm following his will, it's already been pre laid out and determined. That's how unique. And no one else can take the steps I need to take to accomplish the assignment that God sent me here to accomplish. You're unique. You're rare. You're one of a kind. There's none like you, nor will there ever be anything like you or anyone like you.
In Revelation 2:17, it says when you and I get to heaven God will give us a white stone with our name on it. Not the name your mom gave you, or your dad gave you, or not the name your friends, nickname your friends call you, or what your enemies call you, none of that. It's a name that's so unique, so rare, that out of all the billions of people that'll ever live, that name will be given to you and you alone, and according to Revelation 2:17, when you hear it, when you see it, when you read it, you'll immediately receive it and know, ah, the God of the universe has named me that uniquely, that specifically, that you are that rare to God that the name that he calls you by he'll never call another by. Identity. Who I am. I never will know who I am until he tells me who I am is the point.
So, you don't find identity in what you do, you don't find identity in where you come from, you don't find identity in what other people have said about you, you do not discover who he's called you and created you to be until he tells you, until he whispers your name, until he begins to tell you what he's assigned you to do. I have never seen myself and struggle to see myself even to this day as someone that's a pastor or a preacher. When I wake up in the morning, I don't think to myself, "Oh man, I feel like God has called me to be a preacher". I wake up in the day and I think to myself, "Why would anyone do that with their life"?
Do you know who you are? I'm looking in the mirror. I'm like, "Yeah, I know. I know". Everything in me says, "Run, hide, quit". That's what I hear every day until I get with God, and then he starts to tell me who he's called me to be. And I stand up here not in some identity I've gotten from this world 'cause this world would never say that this is who I am. You don't know where I come from but some people know where I come from, and I know where I come from, and I know who I am based upon my assessment of me. And there's no way that I would ever tell me to do this. I would tell me to not do this. But identity doesn't come from what you say about yourself or what others say, it comes from what he says you are. Security.
Need number three. Am I safe? It's not a people thing. People die. People leave. They love us then they don't love us. They come, they go. Safety's not gonna come from the government. One more time. Safety's not gonna come from money. Anything that is a system of this world that has been created and built and is run by human beings will always be unstable, unreliable, and uncontrollable because humans beings run it. And history tell us, not a current assessment, history as a fact tell us the more control you give a human being, the more unreliable and unstable they are. But "Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever". If you want security, you want safety, you wanna know at the end of the day, "Am I set? Am I solid? Do I have what I need to depend on"?
"Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever". "One thousand," the Psalmist said, "May fall at left side, and ten thousand may fall at my right side, but I'm secure in God Almighty". Why? Because he's my refuge, he's my strong tower. And then, I can run to him and when I get to him, I'm safe. So, God made you to depend on him. He made marriage to depend on him. It's the only way you can never thirst is to go to the well that never runs dry. He is the one you depend on. Don't transfer that dependence onto your spouse, or your kids, or your parents, or to church people, or friends, put that dependence on God because if you expect people to be the thing that quenches that thirst in your life, you'll live your life disappointed and discouraged.