Sermon Tone Analysis

It was thanksgiving break of my freshman year of college.

God had done a marvelous work in my heart that first semester of Bible college.

For the first time I was really walking with Christ and I had a desire to share this amazing personal relationship with other people.

I wanted others to know how incredible it was to know Christ as their Savior.

I went home determined to share the gospel with one of my best friends from high school.

I called him up on the phone, went over to his house, and hurled myself into a half hour conversation about the gospel.

He sat at his desk staring into this computer monitor as I unloaded, like a machine gun, my explanation of the gospel.

When I was done, we awkwardly made some small talk pretending like the previous conversation never happened, and we have never since discussed spiritual things.

Have you ever had an experience similar to this one?

Or, maybe you have never shared the gospel with someone because you are afraid that it will go exactly like my own personal experience did.

But, this presents us with a problem.

The problem is that we all need to be involved in giving the good news of the gospel.

We all have been given the task of making disciples.

So, how do we do that in a way that is effective?

How do we share the gospel with people in a way that leads them to faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior?

My suggestion is that we learn from Jesus Christ Himself.

In the book of John I believe that we can learn principles of evangelism from the way Jesus gave the gospel.

Why don’t we strive to be Christlike in the way He evangelized others?

Why don’t we seek to imitate Jesus in every way possible?

Now we have to remember, who is the One that ultimately saves people?

God does.

We plant the seed or we water the seed but God gives the increase.

So, can God use a half hour conversation about the gospel to bring people to saving faith in Jesus Christ?

Yes.

Can God use a tract that you hand out at the grocery store to bring someone to Christ?

Yes.

Can God use door to door evangelism, or street evangelism, or church programs like VBS to bring someone to Christ?

Yes.

God has and does uses these methods to save lost souls.

I am not suggesting that the methods of evangelism we find in the book of John are the ONLY methods of evangelism.

But, if these methods are truly the methods that Jesus Himself used, do you think that they will be effective if we use them as well?

Can we think deeply about the way Jesus evangelized in order to be more Christlike in our own personal evangelism?

And if we really work at it, do you think God might bless?

Do you think God might use us to see people saved for His glory?

I believe, through the example of Jesus, we can learn several important principles of effective evangelism.

What are those principles?

I. Make people curious about spiritual things (vv.

1-15)

The Setting:

If you remember back to chapter 3, the disciples of John the Baptist were upset because many people were leaving John’s ministry and were becoming disciples of Jesus.

And becoming a disciple of Jesus, being obedient to the Son, is exactly what genuine faith results in.

One of the other consequences of many people becoming disciples of Jesus was that the Pharisees caught wind of it, and this did not make them very happy.

And Jesus knows this fact.

As a brief aside John tells us that Jesus was not baptizing, but his disciples were.

This again highlights the importance of baptism as the first step of obedience and identification as a true disciple of Jesus Christ.

Why does John specifically go out of his way to not that while people were identifying as disciples of Jesus, they were not baptized by Jesus personally?

If you are not sure of the answer I would encourage you to study I Corinthians 1:14-17.

So Jesus leaves Judea because of the pressure of the Pharisees and begins the three day journey by foot to Galilee.

And on his way he passes through Samaria.

And he stops in as city called Sychar, and comes to rest at Jacob’s well around the sixth hour (around noon).

It’s hot, he is tired, he is thirsty, he is in Samaria, at Jacob’s well- this is the setting in which Jesus goes to work as an evangelist.

Notice the Master evangelist at work-

The Evangelist:

This verse is a shocking verse if you are a Samaritan or if you are a Jew.

Why? Jesus asks a Samaritan woman for a drink.

What is so shocking about that?

She is Samaritan- the Jews viewed the Samaritans with contempt, they viewed them as spiritually unclean, they viewed them as people to be avoided.

And yet Jesus asks her for a drink.

What else is shocking about this request?

She is not only a Samaritan she is also a woman.

This is shocking, this is simply something that is not done.

And yet Jesus breaks all religious and cultural norms and he asks her for something to drink.

In other words He does something that this woman cannot understand to make her curious.

Does it work?

“How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink of me, who am a woman of Samaria?”

I don’t understand this.

Now, how does Jesus answer her?

Does he take pains to correct her miss-understanding?

This should do it right?

Jesus expertly cleared up any miss-understanding right?

Actually, he does the exact opposite.

Instead of answering her first question, he makes another statement that she cannot understand.

“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, Give me to drink; you would have asked of him, and he would have given you living water.”

If someone were to ask us to describe the different characteristics that water could assume, we might say that water can be hot, cold, running, polluted, wet, and so on.

But what does “living water” look like?

Does it have four legs and a head, or leaves like a tree?

Plants, animals and humans are living – but water?

As the woman understood immediately, Jesus did not mean drinkable water as opposed to “dead” polluted water.

The water in Jacob’s well was drinkable, but Jesus was not referring to that.

Did the woman understand what Jesus meant?

She has no idea!

She still thinks Jesus in some way is talking about the water in Jacob’s well, but then again maybe not as seen by her next response.

To obtain water on this spot, even the patriarch Jacob had found it necessary to dig a well and to provide the means for raising the water from the deep hole.

If Jesus was offering fresh water without expending the energy to dig or using the means provided, he was greater than Jacob, or a cheap charlatan.

The woman has little doubt Jesus is the latter: the form of her question (v.

12) implies the answer was a decisive ‘No!’ in her own mind.

But misunderstanding combines with irony to make the woman twice wrong: the ‘living water’ Jesus offers does not come from an ordinary well, and Jesus is in fact far greater than the patriarch Jacob—a point John’s readers can appreciate, even if the Samaritan woman has not yet grasped the point.

OK, now Jesus is going to clear things up right?

He is going to say something that she can understand right?

Have you noticed that Jesus has not yet answered a single one of the Samaritan woman’s questions?

Question: How is it that you being a Jew offer me a drink?

Answer: If you really knew who I am, you would have asked me and I would have given you living water.

Question: Where are going to get that water, and are you greater than Jacob?

Answer: Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst again.

Why does Jesus refuse to answer her questions?

Maybe, because she has not asked the right questions yet.

Jesus does not let himself become sidetracked by unimportant issues.

Instead, he continues to do things and say things to make the Samaritan woman curious about spiritual things.

And he continues doing this until we get to v. 15

Jesus continues to make statements that were incomprehensible, until the woman asked for the water for herself.

“Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come here to draw.”