The Samaritan One
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Scripture tells us that he who lives by the sword will die by the sword.
Good morning!
Good morning!
That passage has got me a little worried this week, as I have been recalling a statement I made in my fevered sermon last week that I’d like to catch the person who got me sick
I am pleased to tell you that I’m operating at about 70 percent this week, which means that I’m 50 percent less likely to pass out at the pulpit today than I was last week.
I am so glad to see so many of you here this morning, not the least because in at least one of my fevered dreams this week, everybody in our church had come down with the
On the other hand, since I seem to have passed off a version of this infection — if not the flu itself — to both my wife and my mother, I am 200 percent more likely to find my dinner poisoned when I get home today.
The truth is that I don’t recall much of what I said here last week. As it turned out, the low-grade fever I had experienced on Saturday turned into a raging fever as I stood here on the platform, and I can only thank the Holy Spirit for keeping me from heresy in the midst of all that.
Actually, I want to tell you how much I appreciate the prayers and offers of help on our behalf during the week.
I do know that I closed by asking each of you to give prayerful consideration this week to the idea of your “one,” the one person for whom you will be asking God to provide opportunities to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In last week’s focus Scripture, we saw how Paul took advantage of every opportunity he was given to share the good news.
He shared it in the synagogue, he shared it in the marketplace, and he was always ready to answer questions from nonbelievers about his faith.
But in the midst of my fever, I’m not sure how well I made the connection betwen Paul’s preaching in group settings like those to our own witness in one-to-one settings.
And so, I want to spend today and the next few Sundays talking about some New Testament examples of personal evangelism and what those examples have to teach us as followers of Jesus Christ today.
First, though, let’s answer the question of why.
Why should evangelism be something that you are called to do individually? Why isn’t it simply the pastor’s calling? Isn’t it enough that, having been saved, you live a good life?
The answer to that last question helps us to get to the answers to the first two, and the answer to that last question is simply, “No, it is NOT enough.”
One theme runs through nearly all of Paul’s letters to the churches that he had planted — the call for those who have placed their faith in the risen Christ to pursue spiritual maturity.
Where spiritual maturity was lacking, he chided them for it, and where he saw evidence of that kind of maturity, he complimented them for it.
But how do we distill the broad concept of spiritual maturity into a few words? As I considered this, I came across a quote from the Christian writer Jerry White in his 1985 book The Power of Commitment:
“As I reflected on the meaning of maturity, I realized that there is a central mark of maturity. In the human physical realm, maturity is gauged by when a person is able to bear or father children. A tree is mature when it bears fruit. A stalk of grain is mature when it can be harvested. In all creation, fruit-bearing is the preeminent mark of maturity.
“Certainly the spiritual realm differs little. A mature believer bears fruit of two kinds. The first is that of character and holiness of life. The second is becoming a spiritual parent either by leading others to Christ or by adopting a baby or growing a Christian.” [Jerry White, The Power of Commitment (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1985), 130, quoted in Robert J. Morgan, Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, and Quotes, electronic ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000)].
So spiritual maturity certainly is evidenced by increasing holiness in the life of a Christian, but it is also demonstrated by the fruitfulness of evangelism and discipleship of others.
Jerry White, The Power of Commitment (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1985), 130.
Simply put, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ and you do not look for opportunities to have spiritual conversations with others that point them to the cross and the empty tomb, then your spiritual growth has been stunted somewhere along the way.
Robert J. Morgan, Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, and Quotes, electronic ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000).
Now, I know that some of you are thinking you don’t have the knowledge you need to share your faith.
But you don’t need a seminary education to share the gospel with a lost friend or family member any more than you need a degree in constitutional law to weigh in on impeachment.
What you need is a desire to see others saved by the same grace that saved you. What you need is a recognition that if you have been saved by grace you are then called to be a witness to what Jesus has done.
Most of us don’t clam up about politics because we lack a political science degree. Most of us don’t keep our opinions about social or economics matters to ourselves because
Today, we’re going to look at an example of one such spiritual conversation between Jesus and a Samaritan woman and identify some lessons
He went to the cross to bear the sins of mankind and suffer the punishment that we deserve for our rebellion against His perfect and holy Father. He who knew no sin became sin so that those who believe in Him could become the righteousness of God.
He conquered sin on the cross, and He conquered death in His resurrection.
But before He did those things, He showed us how to do personal evangelism.
There were many times, of course, when Jesus taught great crows of people, but there were also times when He brought the message of eternal life to individuals.
Today, we’re going to take a look at one of those times, His encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, which you’ll find in John, Chapter 4.
Now this is a long passage, and there’s some deep theological content that we’ll soon be covering in our Wednesday study of the Book of John.
But today, I want to take you through the passage and point out a couple of things as we go along, and I want to show you some principles of personal evangelism, because this encounter took place, at least in part, as a lesson to His disciples about evangelism.
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Th first principle personal evangelism is to meet people where they are.
Meet people where they are
Meet people where they are
Meet people where they are
Meet people where they are
Note that Verse 4 tells us Jesus “had to pass through” Samaria. The most direct route from Judea to Galilee was through Samaria, and most Jews would have ignored even their prejudice against Samaritans for the shorter trip that cutting through Samaria caused.
But in the context of Jesus’ ministry, this shortcut was about something other than saving time.
You should note that in the previous chapter, Jesus has spent an evening talking to Nicodemus, one of the ruling class of Pharisees and a highly respected teacher of Judaism, only to see Nicodemus refuse His Kingdom message of eternal life.
Now, Jesus would go to the Gentiles — in fact, to those Gentiles the Jewish people hated most — to show that they would be more receptive to the Good News that the Kingdom of God had come than the Jewish people for whom that message was initially intended.
In fact, Jesus had come to save the world. This visit to Samaria was simply the first step of making salvation available to all mankind.
So Jesus went where the Samaritans were.
And He went specifically to find this woman. She was getting her water at about noon, the hottest part of the day and a time when nobody else would have been there. That was probably intentional on her part — she probably didn’t want to encounter any of the people of her community who knew her and knew her sordid history.
But Jesus knew her, and He knew when and where He would find her, and so He went to Jacob’s well at noontime and asked her for some water.
If you want to share the gospel with someone, you have to meet them where they are. But you also have to meet them where they are spiritually and emotionally, and the next few verses show us that this is exactly what Jesus does with this woman.
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Jesus knew this woman’s spiritual condition, and He knew her moral condition. And He went to her anyway. He met her where she was.
Listen, too many of us have been in church for so long that we expect everybody to look and act like church folks — whatever that means.
Here’s the thing: We can’t expect lost people to act like anything but lost people, and if we think we are going to wait until someone has cleaned up his or her act enough to deserve to hear the gospel from us, then we’ve got the whole thing wrong anyway.
Jesus ministered to tax collectors and prostitutes and sinners. In fact, He said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Of course, He said that to the scribes and Pharisees, who considered themselves righteous, and the irony that was lost on them was that they were as desperately sick as the worst of the criminals in that society.
Not one of us who has followed Jesus Christ in faith was righteous enough to have deserved the grace that He lavished upon us as He hung on that cross. Jesus met us where we were, and His Holy Spirit is now working to change us into the image of His righteousness.
Which brings us to the second lesson about doing personal evangelism:
Point them to Christ
Point them to Christ
Look back at Verse 9 for a moment. Now, you’ll see what the woman initially thought about Jesus.
But Jesus engages with her, and they begin sharing some things about themselves, and it becomes clear that they have something in common — a desire for water.
He was a Jew. Clearly He was an unusual Jew in that He was talking to a person who had three strikes against her in the eyes of most Jews of the time — Samaritan, woman, and sexual sinner. But still, she saw simply a Jewish man asking her for water.
The thing is that Jesus didn’t have some stock evangelistic message ready to deliver to anybody he encountered. Instead, He sought to engage them, to find common ground, to become friendly, if not friends.
But Jesus had identified common ground between them — a desire for water — and He used that common ground to initiate a spiritual conversation with her.
And when He did, He began to reveal things about Himself that made her curious.
What was this gift of God? What was this living water?
She was curious, but she was also skeptical.
So then Jesus pulled back the curtain a bit more.
The living water that Jesus had to offer was something far greater than what could be found in Jacob’s well. And the gift was eternal life. And Jesus was telling the Samaritan woman that He had the authority to offer both.
Now Jesus was speaking in spiritual terms, but the woman was no different at that point than the crowds who pursued Him after His miracle of loaves and fishes. Those thousands of people wanted Him to meet their physical needs, and this Samaritan woman wanted the same thing.
Getting your water from a community well is no easy task, and she would have loved to avoid having to make the trip every day.
But Jesus wanted to help her to understand that He could meet her far-greater spiritual needs, so He dropped a bit of a bomb into the conversation. “Go get your husband.”
And then as she heard Him describe the sordid details of her love life, she realized that this man wasn’t simply some random Jew.
“”Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.”
For Jesus, this whole conversation had been about making this woman see who He was, and if you skip down to Verse 29, you’ll see that she eventually recognized that she was talking to the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior of the world.
That’s what I mean when I say to point people to Jesus. When you’re sharing the gospel, find common ground with the person you’re talking to, listen to the things they’re saying about life, and then point them to Jesus as the answer.
Help them to see who Jesus is. Help them to see what He has done for you. Help them to see what He did for them on the cross. Help them to see that they are lost without Him.
Help them to see that His resurrection proves He has the power to save all who would come to Him in faith. Help them to see that He alone has the power to save. And help them to see that He deserves their worship.
Point them to Jesus.
Now, in this encounter, Jesus had been progressively revealing who He was to this woman, and when He revealed that He also knew who SHE was, she thought she might try to steer the conversation to a less awkward topic by getting Him to debate a theological matter.
You see, nobody likes to be confronted with their sin. And most folks, when they have been so confronted, will do whatever they can to change the subject.
You’ll see this in personal evangelism, and you’ll see it if you’re ever discipling or mentoring another Christian. People don’t like to come under conviction, and they don’t like to realize how deceitful their hearts really are.
But Jesus kept the conversation focused on the matter of this woman’s heart, telling her in Verse 24 that those who want to worship God must do so “in spirit and truth.”
What He meant by that was that truly spiritual worship comes from a changed heart, one that has been renewed by the work of the Holy Spirit. Without a spiritual change taking place within her, there would be no way this woman ever could worship God in the way that He has demanded.
And that leads us to the next lesson in personal evangelism:
Call for a response
Call for a response
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I think what’s going on in Verse 25 is that this woman is trying to cut the conversation short. “Well, the Messiah will come someday and answer all these questions. He’ll tell us what we’re supposed to do.”
And then Jesus says, “I who speak to you am He,” and suddenly it’s clear to the woman that everything Jesus has said to her demands a response.
It was the same when you heard the message of the gospel. It demanded a response from you. And it is the same when you share the gospel; it demands a response from the person with whom you’ve shared it.
We cannot hear the message that there is no other name by which we must be saved without choosing either to put our faith in Jesus or turn our backs on Him.
Jesus had brought the Samaritan woman of this passage to a point where she was forced to make a choice about Him.
What we see in this passage is that the woman had finally accepted that Jesus wasn’t simply some random talkative Jew, and he was not simply a prophet with keen insight into her private affairs. This was truly the Christ, the Son of God.
So what did she do? She did what we’re all called to do.
She dropped the things of her old life and went to tell others about her Savior.
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Every time in Scripture when we see someone having a true faith encounter with Jesus Christ, the response is the same: They want to tell others.
So why is it that so many in the modern church seem to think the job of evangelism belongs solely to the pastor? If you have given your life to Christ, then why are you still sitting beside the well with your water pot?
Skip over the next few verses for a minute and look at Verse 39.
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Here’s the thing: The combination of your witness and the word of God is a powerful thing. The Samaritan woman got the people in town interested in meeting this man who had told her about her life. And then they heard His words for themselves, and they recognized Him for who He was, the Savior of the world.
But they never would have known he was there if she had not run off to tell them.
That’s really the essence of this message: How will the world know Jesus if we do not tell them? How will your “one” know about the difference Christ has made for you if you do not share the gospel with them?
Why would you wait for someone else to share Jesus with your lost sons and daughters, your lost brothers and sisters, your lost neighbors and friends? You cannot control whether someone else will EVER do that. But you can control whether YOU do it.
I mentioned earlier that this encounter with the Samaritan woman had a two-fold purpose — so that she could meet the one who could save her from her sins and so that the disciples could learn an important lesson.
Go back to verse 31 and we’ll see that their lesson is also ours.
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Just like the Samaritan woman at the beginning of her encounter with Jesus, the disciples are worried about physical matters. They’re worried about the things of this world.
But Jesus redirects them. Jesus tells them that what’s more important — and more fulfilling — to Him than temporal things like this meal they’re so concerned about is the work that His Father had sent Him to do.
The most important work you will do in this life is the work you do for the Kingdom of God.
And Kingdom work is all about the fruitfulness. It’s all about the fruit of souls won for Jesus Christ.
The disciples had missed much of the encounter with the Samaritan woman, but they got to see the fruit of her salvation when the people of town streamed out to meet Jesus. And they got to see another important principle of personal evangelism.
God brings the increase
God brings the increase
Some of the disciples would do the work of sowing the seeds of the gospel, and some would do the work of harvesting fruit from seeds that were sown by someone else. “One sows and another reaps.” Either way, God brings the increase.
When you have met people where they are, and you have pointed them to Christ and called for a response, you have done all that you can do. The rest is between them and God.
God brings the increase
God brings the increase
When you have met people where they are, and you have pointed them to Christ and called for a response, you have done all that you can do. The rest is between them and God.
I will tell you that this is the hardest part for me as a pastor. Whether I stand here preaching an evangelistic message or a discipleship message, I always want to see the impact that it has made. I want to know that it had some effect.
But that’s the flesh talking. That’s the part of me that wants to know that I’ve delivered a powerful message.
The thing to remember — whether you’re doing personal evangelism or teaching in a classroom or even standing behind a pulpit — is that it isn’t your message or my message that’s powerful.
What’s powerful is the message of the cross, and “to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.”
Brothers and sisters, lift up your eyes and look on the fields. They are white for the harvest.
You have a powerful message to share.
Now, put down your water pots, stop worrying about lunch and get to work building the Kingdom of God.