It’s Not What It Looks Like

Do you know how important you are to God? Do you need a strong reminder of His love? This message is for you.

In this sermon from T.D. Jakes, he takes a familiar story from the gospels – Jesus and the woman at the well – and offers a fresh perspective on it.

Bishop Jakes focuses on how Jesus sent his disciples away for food, but in truth, He had a different motive. He knew the woman who would come to the well, and he knew how Jews looked down on Samaritans as outcasts. He knew his disciples hadn’t grown enough not to look down on the Samaritans, and nothing could get in the way of His mission.

T.D. Jakes breaks down just how massive Jesus’ intent was. First, he traveled to Samaria, a community of people considered unclean, then, he waited for a woman, who in that society was considered lower than a man. But he wasn’t waiting for just any Samaritan woman.

Coming up on the.
He sat down by the well, and he waited on you. You might not be important to anybody else.
But you must be important to god. He stopped the gun from killing you.
He stopped the car wreck from destroying you. He stopped the disease from typing you.
He said, leave that girl alone. I got a plan for her, and I’m waiting on her.
Everybody who’s ever had god Wait on you. Take just a moment and give the lord a praise.
This is Greetings, friends in the name of Jesus Christ Star King.
I’m so excited to have this opportunity to share the word of the lord with you.
I’ve got an exciting word for you, it’s not what it looks like.
You’ll understand it better in a moment. I believe the word is going to bless life. Get ready.
Get ready. Get ready. Here it comes. It’s not what it looks like. Take a look.
The 4th chapter of Saint John, the 25th verse is at the end of a narrative where the gospel of Saint John points to a unique story about Jesus coming to uh, the Samaritan woman down at the whale.
And the conversation has ensued between them, and we will begin at the ending or near the conclusion of the conversation between the woman at the well and Jesus.
Verse number 25, the woman saith under him know that Messiah is coming, which is called Christ.
When he has come, he will tell us all things Jesus said, uh, faith unto her, I that speak unto thee and he.
And upon this came and upon this came his disciples and marveled that he talked with the woman yet no man said what seekers thou or why talkest thou with her.
The woman then left her water pot And when her way into the city and say if to the men come see a man, which told me all things that ever I did is not this the Christ.
Then they went out of the city and came onto him.
Now the normal direction of reading such a text would lead us to this evangel evangelistic endeavor of this woman who goes down into the city of Samaria to say, come see a man uh, which told me all things that I’ve ever done, but I’m going to avoid that and instead uh, go to verse 27.
And upon this came his disciples, upon what, upon the conversation, between him and the woman.
And upon this came his disciples and marveled that he talked with the woman, yet no man said what seeketh thou or why talkest thou with her.
That’s where I’m going to focus my uh, talks this morning, 27th verse.
And my subject is, it’s not what it looks like.
Look at your neighbor and say it’s not what it looks like.
It is odd that John, uh, takes us in the 4th chapter to a rest stop, if you will, where Jesus sets down to rest at the well and sends his disciples after meat and sends them out to get meat, uh, so that he might that they might return to the well.
And when they return to the well, the oddity of the situation is, the lord who sent them to get meat and bread when they return with the meat and bread says I’m not hungry.
Now you must understand that they traveled by foot it took a while to go on such an errand.
It took quite a while to go on an errand, and you would think that if you sent your disciples 12, to go get lunch.
And all of them walked off and left you by yourself. 12 men going to get lunch for one man.
He should have been pretty hungry.
And then when they come back with the lunch, this there he is sitting by the well, uh, talking to this woman And though they had too much respect for him to question him, uh, the gospel of saint John reads their mind, says, wait a minute.
I thought you were hungry.
Now you say you have meat that we know not of?
And I thought you were tired.
And we come back and you’re engrossed in this conversation with this woman.
And he says, it is not what it looks like.
You must realize my brothers and sisters for Jesus to say that he must need go through Samaria, that was startling alone.
If we could excuse the fact that he has become engrossed with this conversation with this woman of a questionable past, we still have the glaring reality that what is this Jewish teacher doing in Samaria.
Any self respecting Jewish theologian would have never come into Samaria in the first place.
There was a war between the Samaritans and the Jews, as it related to the fact, that the Jews rightly resisted the that fellowship with the Samaritans because the Samaritans had a form of godliness denying the power thereof, and they would not allow them to pass themselves off as if they were the same thing when they were not at all the same thing.
There was a war between them. The Samaritans were considered unclean They had no dealings with them.
They had no plan for them.
They had no future for them because they knew things about the Samaritans that would have exempted them from being eligible to have a legitimate relationship with god.
Now it’s one thing when people say things about you that are not true.
But it’s another thing when they have legitimate reasons to alienate you and attack you on the basis of past mistakes.
It is not that Jesus is not aware of what being said about the Samaritans, he is pointedly and poignantly aware of the Samaritans.
About their idolatrous raise, about their mistakes, about their failures.
And yet, he says, I must need go to Samaria. Why would you be bothered with Samaria anyway?
They’re heathens. Their past is ruined. Their mistakes are bad. They didn’t help us in the rebuilding of the temple.
In fact, they were thorns in our flesh.
They are a mix multitude and amalgamation of a lot of different ideas.
These people are confused at what church people have a tendency to do.
When they think that you are confused and they don’t agree with you, they either attack you or alienate you.
But I’m so glad that Jesus is not like church people.
He said, I must need go through Samaria.
In other words, I’m going out of my way to go after a group of people that everybody else has rejected because just because you have not included them, does not mean that I don’t have a strategy for their lives.
And not only are they important enough that I have added them to my agenda, included them on my itinerary, but I am willing to sit by the whale all day to find one person who can help me break down the wall and get into Samaria.
One person. Now I would have thought Jesus being the son of god. Jesus being of the tribe of Judah.
Jesus being the seed of Abraham. Jesus being the root of Jesse.
That if he was going to infiltrate the Samaritans and break into their world, he might have talked to their magistrates, their kings, their leadership, their authority, I would have thought that he would have made an appointment, at least with one of their priests in their ruined temple, and battle their scripture against scripture to bring them into a reformation of truth.
I would have thought that Jesus would have written a blog site and said their error, their in error, and their in heresy, and attack their integrity.
I would have thought that Jesus would have put them on blast in some sort of way dealing with their leadership to break into the city.
But, no, Jesus doesn’t pick the aristocracy of Samaria.
He doesn’t pick the religious crimes of Samaria, but he sits by the well, not even waiting on a man.
He waits on a woman. A woman of sidecar to come down to the well The Bible doesn’t even give us the name of this woman.
She is a nameless woman. And yet, Jesus sits down at the well, and waits to meet her.
He sends his boys on an errand because sometimes even the people who are with you do not understand your vision, and they will alienate you from the very people that god sent you to serve and to save.
Because there is nothing. There is no group of people that act any more important than the people that are with the man of god, often act more important then the man of god himself.
I’m a work on this a little while.
Jesus knew that he could not get done what he was trying to do surrounded by his disciples.
They had already tried to shut up Blind Bartemayas, who sat by the highway side begging.
He was too loud, and he makes too much noise.
And what about the woman who came to Jesus crying after her daughter?
They said send her away for she crying after us.
These disciples would have messed up the mission because they were so indoctrinated with preconceived ideologies that there was no room for revelation to break through their orthodox religion.
Some people are so religious that they miss the revelation that there are other people who may be theologically wrong, but god still has a purpose for their life and them also must I bring.
Oh, glory to god. So Jesus sat down at the well, and he began to wait for this woman to come down to the well.
And when she comes down to the well, she has an attitude She has a kind of attitude that results from people who are used to being attacked.
She does not wait for him to attack her.
She comes down to the well and attacks him, saying, now you know that your people and my people don’t have any dealings.
You already know. So don’t come down here trying to be nice to me because, you know, we don’t have any talk.
Sometimes people who have been hurt are the hardest people in the world to help because even when you reach out to help them, they already have an attitude.
You have never been fought like you will be fought by somebody you are trying to save from drowning.
Even though your intentions are good, their desperation is so bad that you can get killed trying to help somebody who’s hurting Oh, y’all don’t hear what I’m saying to you.
But Jesus begins to deal with her until in the next phrase, She goes from being sarcastic to calling him sir.
She calls him sir because now she begins to understand that he is due some respect.
And then later on, she acknowledges him as a prophet. And then later on, She brings up the Messiah.
And then later on, he says, I that speak am he.
Look at how god is bringing this woman into gradual revelation.
He goes from being an enemy and an alien to a sir, from a sir to a prophet, from a prophet to the Messiah.
Isn’t it nice how god will bring you into truth?
Not one step, but several steps to bring you into the enlightenment of what god would do in your life.
And I wanna take a moment and just thank him for waiting on me.
I haven’t always thought what I think now, and I didn’t always know what I know now.
I didn’t always feel the way I feel now.
But when I had the wrong attitude and the wrong spirit and the wrong aspect of faith, I wanna thank you for being the kind of patient god who could have cut me out of his schedule, but sat down by the well and waited for me to come into a progressive revelation of who Christ is in the earth.
I that speak unto thee and he touch somebody and say he is. Everything you’ve been looking for.
He’s everything you need everything you want, everything you seek, everything you long for, everything you’ve been craving for, and he’s been waiting on you.
All your life, all while you were drunk, all while you were high, all while you were in the hotels, all while you were serving other gods, He sat down by the well, and he waited on you.
You might not be important to anybody else, but you must be important to god.
He stopped the gun from killing you. He stopped the car wreck from destroying you.
He stopped the disease from attacking you. He said, leave that girl alone.
I got a plan for her, and I’m waiting on her.
Everybody who’s ever had god wait on you take just a moment and give the lord a praise.
Still to come. On the potter’s touch.
Tell your neighbor on the verge of something big. I’m on the verge of something big.
I know it looks like I’m not much. I it looks like I don’t have anything.
I know I did some dumb things in my past, but I’m on the verge of something big, and I wanna tell the devil You think I’m a champ.
It’s not what it looks like. God has a plan for my life.
Before I die in a cage, I wanna run-in the wild.
We can do what it is without limits. Without being boxed in a cage, without being hindered.
I wanna run-in the wilder my destiny. I wanna run-in the wilder my is telling us to branch out in.
It’s time to shift and just about taking it to the next level and to, um, just thinking outside of the Four walls, I got to get out of this cage.
God has given us a place around where we are passionate to take over that region.
For the for the kingdom of god.
You’re frustrated about something that’s just an incubator to take you to the next it.
Now we’re gonna grow and go to global missions. No more limits. No more boundaries. The cage is open.
You don’t have any excuses anymore on why you can’t fulfill purpose and to complete your assignments.
To register for this international gathering, visit pastors and leaders dot org or call 1800 Bishop 2.
The story of the woman at the well, in order to infiltrate the indoctrination of their the benefit of a comparative analysis.
He does it this way. He comes to Jacob’s well.
It is called Jacob’s well because Jacob dug this well through solid rock.
It is a cistern of water that has now begun to feed these people who have become indigenous to this area and are living in Samaria.
It is Jacob’s will. It is Jacob is well. Jacob. Jacob. Swell. Jacob’s well. Israel’s well. Israel’s well.
What the well is in the earth, Christ is in the spirit.
For Christ, is of Jacob. He is born to Israel. He is the well of living water.
So what you have here is a well sitting on a well.
And here comes an empty woman down to the well that she has already come to all of her life.
But now there’s a well sitting on a well.
He starts the conversation by saying, give me the drink, knowing that her pots are empty when he asks the question.
Knowing that her religious dogma would alienate her from giving him water, knowing that even his own disciples would not approve of him asking this, uh, woman for some water, seeing as she is a Samaritan woman, he knows she cannot give him what he asked for.
God always ask us to give something that we cannot give without him so that his request will create a thirst to ask him to give us what he asked us for so that we can give it of now can I go just a little bit deeper with this?
The well is sitting on a well. And he asked her for water. And she’s suspicious.
She said, And you you come down here saying you want something to drink, and you didn’t bring nothing to draw with?
Sound like a pickup line to me.
She said, you ain’t you ain’t got nothing to draw with.
And he says, if you knew the gift of god, you would ask me for water.
Uh, now now he’s switching up on her because he asked her for water.
He said, but if you saw the whale that’s sitting on the whale instead of cross examining me about that which is temporal You would bypass your will and come to my will and ask me for that, which is eternal.
She said, oh, yeah. What’s so good about your water?
He says, if you drink of the water in here, you will thirst again.
But if you drink of the water in here, you will never thirst again. Now she’s confused.
She knows she has a need. She knows she needs to draw.
She doesn’t know whether to draw from the physical or the spiritual.
She says, but this is water, and this is a well.
And this is where everybody else goes. And he’s saying, it’s not what it looks like.
Just because everybody goes there doesn’t mean that it will satisfy your thirst.
It may look like it will satisfy your thirst, but it is not what it looks like.
I don’t know who I’m preaching to this morning. But I feel like I’m already talking to somebody.
The enemy is showing you how to get your needs met, and he says he’s got a solution to your problem.
But the lord sent you here this morning so that you would have a warning that that looks good is not good.
It is not what it looks like.
Standstill and see the salvation of the lord, some trusted horses, some trusted chariots, but I will remember the name of the lord Slap your neighbor and tell them is not what it looks like.
All that glitters is not gold. Just because it winks at you doesn’t mean it’s a blessing.
Just because it takes advantage of your need doesn’t mean that god has answered through what you’re about to do.
You need to stop and be still.
I hear the lord saying that the coming of Israel is a sign that Isaac is on his way.
The force always comes before the real.
And if you have the power, to say no to this well.
You will open up to this well, and your latter day shall be greater than your former day.
I don’t know who I’m preaching to.
But if you think it might be you, give god a praise on credit.
And she says, well, give me this water.
That I first not, neither come hither to draw. She says, I am tired.
Since you brought it up, stranger, I am tired of going back and forth and back and forth.
And back and forth and back and forth to the same old stuff that just gets me by for a little while.
And then I gotta go back and do it again and again and again and again.
And I’m old enough now, and I’m wise enough now. To value my time.
And I don’t wanna go through the next year when I went through the past year, going through the same old debt beat stuff to get a little water to get me by for the weekend.
Give me this water so I can finally thirst not settle down, master what god has called me to be, step into my destiny, out of my history, I’m ready to get this water.
I’m too old to spend another year going through the same old stuff over and over again, I need a breakthrough.
Is there anybody in the house this morning?
Who’s ready for a supernatural breakthrough give god 30 seconds of praise.
Touch three people from and tell them you’re getting close.
You’re getting close. You’re getting close. You’re getting close. You’re getting close.
You’re closer than you’ve ever been. You’ve closer than you’ve ever been in your life.
You’re nearer than you’ve ever been in your life. You’re near it to the peace you’ve been looking for.
You’re near it to the power you’ve been looking for.
You’re near it to the glory that you’ve ever been in your life.
Ain’t no time to stop now, press your way. That’s why the devil’s fighting you.
That’s why the enemies trying to destroy you.
That’s why all hell is breaking loose in your life because the enemy knows you have an appointment with destiny, an appointment that you didn’t set, an appointment that you didn’t know you had, you think you’re just going down to the well to get the same old stuff again, but this is a setup.
God is about to change your life. God is about to give you a breakthrough.
God is about to deliver you. God is about to snatch you out.
God is about Tell your neighbor, I’m on the verge of something big.
I’m on the verge of something big. I know it looks like I’m not much.
I know it looks like I don’t have anything.
I know I did some dumb things in my past, but I’m on the verge something big.
And I wanna tell the devil, you think I’m a champ. It’s not what it looks like.
God, have a plan for my life. God have a joy for my life.
God on it, victory for my life. God had to memorize for my life.
Somebody praising anybody Everybody present. Let everything that have bread.
Walgover in swaps, if I say, it’s not what it looks like.
You think I’m not gonna be nothing but the devil in the line.
You think I’m not gonna make a comeback, but the devil in the line.
You think I’m not gonna get a breakthrough, but the devil is a lie. Tell everybody who left you.
It’s not what looks like. You thought I was a sinking ship, but the devil is alive.
It is not I’ve gotta close there, but it’s been a real joy to have the opportunity to be a part of your life and to share the word of the lord with you.
I pray that the word would sink deeply into your heart.
And then it would bring forth real fruit into your life.
May God bless you and have him smile upon you until you and I can get together again.
Take care now. While I was distracted, he waited on me.
If he never gives me anything else, I owe him a praise.
What do you do when you are between miracles?
God says when I pull you out a blessing, I am not limited to your capacity.
Give me your death. I’ll give you my life. Give me your reflection. I’ll give you my with
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When they started talking about washing She said, I know the messiah is coming.
He said, I have to speak under you, and he. God reveals himself in Washington.
You’ve been asking god to show up, but you haven’t been Washington.
You’ve been wearing You’ve been complaining. God doesn’t show up in Warren.
God shows up in praise.
Let it and think that have wrapped.