THE DIFFICULTIES OF EVANGELISM
JOHN 4:1-26
INTRO: I’ve heard about a little six-year old boy who restlessly struggled to listen to a rather lengthy sermon. After the service, the little boy asked the question that sooner or later most "church kids" ask. "Dad" he said, "what does the preacher do the rest of the week?" The dad replied, "Son, he’s a very busy man. He takes care of church business, visits the sick, studies the Bible. . . and he has to take time to rest up. You see, preaching in public is not an easy job." The little boy thought about that and said, "Well, listening ain’t so easy either!"
. I hope that I won’t be too awful hard to listen to this morning.
. Today’s sermon is on the most dreaded word in Christendom.
. Evangelism.
. This word brings fear into the heart of the bravest Christian. . . . You mean that you want me to share my faith. That’s the preacher’s job.
. Jesus last command to us was to tell others about Him . To make disciples.
. We are supposed to be fishers of men and instead we have become keepers of the aquarium. Let me tell you what I mean by that.
. "In the Great Commission the Lord has called us to be--like Peter--fishers of men. We’ve turned the commission around so that we have become merely keepers of the aquarium. Occasionally I take some fish out of your fishbowl and put them into mine, and you do the same with my bowl. But we’re all tending the same fish." [steve shepard, seeking and saving the lost, sermon central]
. There is nothing wrong with tending fish once you have them, but we shouldn’t stop there! We don’t exist for ourselves! We need to catch more fresh fish instead of swapping fish that have already been caught! We need to win more people to Christ!
. I want to share with you thus morning a model that Jesus has set for us in evangelism.’
. In our scripture this morning were going to see that Jesus went to difficult places, He talked with difficult people and he dealt with difficult issues.
Jn. 4:1-26 Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John 2 (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples), 3 He left Judea and departed again to Galilee. 4 But He needed to go through Samaria.
5 So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 6 Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” 8 For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
9 Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
11 The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? 12 “Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 “but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”
15 The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.”
Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’
18 “for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”
19 The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20 “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.”
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. 22 “You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. 23 “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. 24 “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
25 The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us all things.”
26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”
. The first thing we see here is that Jesus went to a Difficult Place.
. Jesus went to a place where Jews didn’t go. He went to Samaria.
Vs4, says that he needed to go through Samaria. Theologians debate the meaning of needing to go through Samaria. Did He go that way because it was the quickest way to get to Galilee which was His next destination or did He know that he had a divine appointment with the woman at the well?
. I don’t know, but I do know that the Jewish people did not usually travel through Samaria.
. They avoided Samaria as much as they could.
. You see when the Northern kingdom of Israel was exiled to Assyria, the Assyrian king left of few Jewish people there and then he brought in captured people from other lands and settled them there in Samaria. These people mixed in with the Jews and they started marrying each other creating another race that came to be known as the Samaritans. To the Jews they were half breeds and the land that they lived in was not a place a good Jew would enter. It was very dangerous for them.
. In the business that I work in with my brothers, there are places that we really don’t want to go. Much like Samaria was in Jesus’ day. The distance or the area or the people that we will have to deal with are not something we want to do. A few years ago we got a call in to go to one of these places and we debated and debated whether to go or not. Finally we went and it turned into one of the biggest jobs we had ever done up to that point.
. There are places out in our world that aren’t real appealing aren’t there. Places that we really don’t want to go into and especially to try to win the lost.
. We see it everyday with the inner city missionaries and the trailer park missionaries. .
. In Jesus’ model here, we must be willing to go where the lost is. Where the opportunity the catch fish is.
. I’m not telling you to endanger yourself, but we must be willing to go where God tells us.
. Sometimes that will be difficult, Jesus went to Difficult Places to seek the lost.
. Next we see that Jesus Dealt with Difficult People
. In verse 9 we see that after Jesus had asked the woman at the well for a drink, vs. 9 says “Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.”
. You see, these people, the Jews and Samaritans hated each other.
. The Jews saw them as half breeds an aberration of what God had called His people to be.
. The Samaritans hated the Jews because of the way they looked down on them and treated them.
. This was a difficult conversation because of the biases and hatred that this woman had for all Jews.
. Jesus had no such biases. He did not look down on here because of her station in life nor her ethnicity.
. Let me tell you the story of Ted Stallard.[ Darrel Davis, Becoming Lovers Of The Unlovable, sermon central]
. A young man who was turned off by school. Very sloppy in appearance. Expressionless. Unattractive. Slow. Often times he would simply sit in class and stare off into space, unresponsive, which was an irritation to his teacher. Miss Thompson, enjoyed bearing down her red pen -- as she placed big red X’s beside his many wrong answers.
. If only she had studied Ted’s school records more carefully. . . They read:
. 1st grade: Ted shows promise with his work and attitude, but (has) poor home situation.
. 2nd grade: Ted could do better. Mother seriously ill. Receives little help from home.
. 3rd grade: Ted is good boy but too serious. He is a slow learner. His mother died this year.
. 4th grade: Ted is very slow, but well-behaved. His father shows no interest whatsoever.
. Christmas arrived. The children piled elaborately wrapped gifts on their teacher
