Sermon Tone Analysis

Good Morning we are in our series entitled Vision 20/20 and we talking about our mission and our vision as we head towards 2020, which is only just over a month away.

Last Sunday, talked about the importance of a Direct Hit and the importance of getting our mission right... if we don't have a direct hit when it comes to our mission we are going --- expend energy and resource circling the wagons…and not have too much to show for our efforts…

Jesus intentionally chose his first disciples they were a cohesive team… who were all ready working together in the fishing industry…Jesus was clear in communicating his mission… they were to leave their nets behind and instead of fishing for fish… they were to become fishers of men..

Instead of fishing making live things dead… they were going to be about the discipling business and to make dead this come alive…

The mission of the church has always been a life giving message… It’s a resurrection message… We were once dead in sin and we have been made now been made alive in Christ…The message frames it like this...

… Our Purpose as a church is to know Jesus and to make Jesus known.. Our mission is reach out with the life giving message of life that is found in Christ..…

The question we are going to look at this morning is how do we as a church reach out to a world that is apathetic towards the gospel?

Leonard Sweet has a book entitled _ Nudge:Awakening Each other to the God who’s Already there…

The premise of the Sweets book is outreach is first allowing God to nudge us --- the life blood of outreach God grace working first in us and then through us…

Leonard Sweet says it like this....

“Evangelism is not propositions, but prepositions.

For God to do something through us, God must be doing something in us”.

What is a nudge?

Nudges are not contrived but are the natural consequence of being with someone in a moment and wishing them to join you in recognizing a God-moment.

The best nudges culminate in a grunt of mutual recognition.

God nudges me because God likes me.

I nudge others because I like them.

Jesus called his disciples to be fishers of men... to make dead things come alive.. mission is to REACH OUT...

The question is How?

How do we reach a world that is apathetic to the message of Jesus?

Jesus strategic in the way he employed the mission.. .. Jesus is moving away from Judea towards Samaria.

It's this centrifugal force of moving out… Our goal in this sermon is to Simply our understanding our Purpose, mission and strategy...

In order for this to happen we have deploy and Outreach strategy.

And begins with our willingness

We are going to be looking at a well known story in John 4 and this interaction between Jesus and Samaritan woman… Jesus and the disciples travel from Judah to Sameria.. and they are hungry and tired… the disciples go to the city find food.. and Jesus goes to Jacobs well… Here we see Jesus in humanity --- tired and weary.. but it is out of tiredness that he is going to have this encounter… with a woman that is going literally change a whole city…

How many can relate to weariness?

Many men of God worked from the place of tiredness....

Luther said he worked so hard that when he went to bed, he literally fell into bed.

In fact, one account says he did not change his bed for a year!

Now that’s tired!

Moody’s bedtime prayer on one occasion was, “Lord, I am tired.

Amen.”

Calvin’s biographers marvel at his output.

John Wesley rode sixty to seventy miles a day and on an average preached three sermons a day...

How did Jesus and others manage to keep going… Well, I think the key to spiritual vitality.. is found in the middle of our text… When the Jesus and the disciples arrive in Samaria they are tired and exhausted.. and the disciples.. go to the city to get food… during this time Jesus has this dialogue with the the Samaritan woman… When they see Jesus again he has been talking to this woman and he looked energized… to the point they they thought someone had fed him… they urged him to eat… Jesus responds..

When we talk about our Purpose, Mission and How this is accomplished… Humanly speaking it may seem like it is too much… Here is the thing…

... if we are going to reach our word it has to come from an attitude of willingness — But that wilingness has to be fueled the Holy Spirit.

T/s How do we reach a world that is apathetic towards the message of Jesus?

1. Be Willing to Deploy a Mission Strategy.

Most churches have talked about mission and vision strategy.

Often the problem is not about having a mission statement it is about we have never Deployed the mission of the church…

When Jesus called Peter, Andrew, John and James… He had them launch from the side of the lake… then they dropped their nets into the water for the catch.... Jesus himself showed us how we can live our lives on mission...

This morning we are going to look at an unusual interaction between Jesus and a woman from Samaria.

In this text we see that the strategy Jesus deployed is not what we might consider “normal.”

The story begins with the movements of Jesus… Jesus is moving from Judea to the region of Samaria… it is reminiesnt of the missional language.. found in Acts 1:8… Where after the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit.. the church is empowered to be witnesses beginning in Jerusalem, moving toJudea and then the ends of the earth.. Mission has movement.. lets read our text..

As Jesus is moving away from Judea where there has been a growing population of Jesus followers… two things mark this New movement, teaching and training (discipleship) and baptism… Baptism is really an outward declaration of an inward reality… There is this outward manifestation of the work of God…

The ministry of Jesus was never in competition with John the Baptist..... in fact ministry was complementing.. John’s ministry is that of the forerunner… preparing the way for the Lord… John recognized that Jesus was the fulfilment of the Messianic promise… He said behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

The relationship between John and Jesus… should be the example that we have when we working with other churches… We are not completing with others but we are complementing others ministries…

It was becoming obvious that Jesus ministry was begining to eclipse the ministry of John the Baptist.

The religious leaders were taking note and watching Jesus and his new followers closely… wondering what kind of threat Jesus was going to be… Jesus knowing that his would could friction between himself and the religious rulers, removes himself from the growing tension and he withdraws from the region t… Ending his Judean ministry.... Jesus understood the escatalogical clock --- simply his time was not yet.

What is interesting in our text is the intentionality in Jesus movements.. Jesus chooses an unusual path to Galilee…a route that was never used by the Jews… Jesus intentionally head for Sameria.... “And he had to pass through Samaria.”

The greek word had - DEI means something that is necessary… There is intentionality to Jesus itinerary....

If there was ever a text where understanding the context — it’s this section in John 4… In order to get the full impact what is in front of the text we have to go behind the text...

Normally Jews would have done everything in their power to avoid travelling through Samaria..

The reason is that there was hatred between the Jews and Samaritan… There was a long history of hatred between these two groups..

It went back to the year 722 BC when the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel and they carried them off into captivity to join other conquered people back… in Assyria… The long term effects was an intermingling of races and these Jews lost much of their former Jewish identity… When the remnant of Jews returned to Israel under Ezra….. the Samaritan and other mixed backgrounds were excluded in the repopulation of the nation.

Samaritan had this back lash response to their rejection and they in turn rejected the Temple in Jerusalem and developing their own Temple on Mount Gerizim… They rejected the Jewish cannon of scriptures and the only adhered to the five books of Mose the Pentateuch… rejected the history of Israels kings, wisdom and prophetic literature… What is interesting is that there still a group of Samaritans today that make worship in mount Gerzhim and still do animal Sacrifices…

The Hatred between these two groups ran deep.

You would have Rabbis in the day saying things like, “The only good Samaritan is a dead Samaritan.”

When Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan it would have been offensive…to his hearers.

Not only the people but the whole land of Sameria was considered unclean… No self respecting Jew should ever go there…When Jews travelled to the feasts they would take the longer route — crossing the Jordan, going down the Kings highway and reenter the Holy land in Jericho to avoid Samaria....

It tells us a lot about Jesus mission when —He goes to Samaria out of necessity.’

Jesus goes to the WELL

Jesus goes to Jacobs well.... “the watering well.”

The place where people often gathered… it was like going to the city square…

When we think about the bulk of Jesus ministry it was really done in the Market place… It was done during the events of regular life… We need to remember that an kind of outreach is probably not going to happen on Sunday mornings... It’s going to happen in places like Jacobs well… And it is here that Jesus chooses to reveal himself to this woman from Sameria ...

Jesus doesn’t avoid but rather He had to go to Samaria…

T/s How do we reach a world that is apathetic towards the message of Jesus?

1. Be Willing to Deploy a Mission Strategy

2. Be Willing to Step out of our Comfort Zones.

There are certain people that we might consider impossible to reach with the Gospel…But the contrary to this belief we see over and over in scripture that those whom we might deem the most difficult to reach… accepting Christ.. from Religious leaders, tax collectors, Jewish Zealots, criminals, prostitutes…

There is no person on this planet that is outside of the reach of the grace of God....

Then there is this interaction with the woman at the well..

It is noon and the disciples have left Jesus and have gone to the city to seek out some food..

Jesus is sitting at Jacobs well… when a woman arrived at the well, carrying a large water jar.

Her eyes were averted to avoid people’s stares.

They knew who she was, this woman who had been married five times and was now living with another man.

She knew what it meant to love and receive nothing in return.

Jesus respectfully asked her for a drink of water.

We learn something about Jesus approach…

In quietly asking her for help, Jesus had cut through centuries of suspicion and animosity.

This breakthrough had not been the outcome of a conference on “cross-cultural evangelism,” which had developed a theology for “reaching the Samaritans.”

No, there had been simply the honest expression of a basic human need.

And at a deeper level, there had been the loving concern of one reaching out to touch that other solitary, needy person.

There is an immediate response an the woman can hardly believe what is happening… She asks Jesus directly...

“How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?”

There is a good reason for her question… Because an interaction like this would never happen… it was unthinkable… there are several reasons.. here are a few...

Firstly,

Jewish rabbis of this era would say that, “A Samaritan woman — a menstruant from the cradle.”

In other words they were considered perpetually unclean.

No self-respecting Jewish man would ever ask for a Samaritan woman to hand him a cup of water—no way.

Second she is a woman whom Jesus did not know..

Jewish men who were pious were not supposed to talk to women they weren’t related to or did not already know from their village.

They could talk to their wife, to their mother, to their cousins, to their children, to neighbors, that sort of thing; but they were certainly not supposed to talk to strange women—certainly not to immoral women, certainly not to Samaritan women.

Thirdly, she is an immoral woman.

Which did not have been appropriate for him to be having this conversation..

We learn from Jesus how we are to approach others…

Jesus does not come to this woman from the place of power, but from this platform of weakness..

He is reaching out with humility, transparency… he cares about the relationship… there is real connection..

Jesus answers this question… in a way that is going to disarm barriers and instead of making their differences the subject… He brings ups something that that they share in common and that is the need for water…