Do you ever find it difficult to share your faith? You become intimidated by the mention of evangelism. Do you assume you need a strategic plan?
If you do, you're not alone. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg helps us by illustrating how Gospel opportunities can begin with a simple question or request. John 4 verse 27, just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him, that is Jesus, talking with a woman.
But no one asked, what do you want or why are you talking with her? Then leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ? And they came out of the town and made their way towards him. Meanwhile, his disciples urged him, Rabbi, eat something. But he said to them, I have food to eat that you know nothing about. Then his disciples said to each other, could someone have brought him food? My food, said Jesus, is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not save four months for and then the harvest?
I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields. They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages. Even now he harvests the crop for eternal life so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying, one sows and another reaps is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for.
Others have done the hard work and you have reaped the benefits of their labor. Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. He told me everything I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them and he stayed two days. And because of his words, many more became believers.
They said to the woman, we no longer believe just because of what you said. Now we have heard for ourselves and we know that this man really is the savior of the world. Amen. Father, with our Bibles open before us, we humbly pray for your help that in speaking, listening, seeking to understand and apply your word, we may know ourselves to be under your tutelage. For we pray humbly in Jesus' name.
Amen. Well I wonder, does it appear unduly harsh to suggest that these disciples were more concerned about sandwiches than they were about salvation? And would it be wrong to suggest that the present day church, us, that we, his disciples at this point in time, are in danger of making a similar but largely the same mistake? Losing track of the central issue, forgetting really what it is all about that God has come in Jesus to do.
Because you will notice from the text that it was while they were buying food that these events unfolded. They had gone into the town, John tells us, these disciples who would later on be dispatched by Jesus to go out into their community and beyond. And while they were gone, Jesus is involved in what is clearly a moment of cross-cultural evangelism. Indeed, the surprise on the part of the disciples in verse 27 when they return was equal to the surprise of the Samaritan woman, as you have it recorded for you there in verse 9. The woman is asking, could this be the Christ in verse 29? And the disciples are asking, would someone have brought him food in verse 33? It is just this wonderful irony that runs all the way through John's gospel. Here, the disciples preoccupied with the affairs of physicality and the immediacy of temporal need. And a woman who earlier in the day had been focused entirely upon the routine task of collecting water now finds herself involved in telling a whole community concerning this man that she had met. And so he provides them, you will notice in verse 34 with a word of explanation, which we read, he says, I know that you are concerned and rightly about these things, but my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
That's his explanation. And then his exhortation is in verse 35, I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields. They are ripe for harvest. Now that word of exhortation from Jesus set in the historical context here in John 4 is a word that needs to be sounded in every generation. And most importantly, when the people of God are in danger of turning the affairs of time into the experience of sailing around in a marina, rather than taking the lifeboat of their life out onto the troubled seas of human existence. And you go amongst these people in their congregations and they're very engrossed in teaching, in small groups, in discipleships, in the establishing of the family, in the caring for all of the internal facets of Christian living, all of which are clearly important in the framework of Christianity. But none of them on their own nor all of them together come close to the issue of seeing unbelieving people becoming the committed followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. And to every generation that is in danger of losing its focus, to every Christian that may be preoccupied with that which is helpful but not best, this exhortation rings out from the lips of Jesus.
I tell you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields. They're ripe for harvest. I often say to younger ministers now as they launch out into their privileged responsibilities amongst God's people, I say to them, my concern for you is not so much that you will fail, but that you will succeed at the wrong stuff, that you will succeed at the wrong things. And the disciples here need this lesson, and so do we. You see, the passion for reaching people with the gospel is quenched when we lose sight of the grandeur of the gospel. The passion for reaching people, the passion for mission, whether it is local mission, whether it is the mission of reaching our children or our grandchildren, that passion will always be quenched if and when we lose sight of the grandeur of the story that is in the gospel. When we sing of the name of Jesus, as we've been singing, we need constantly to remind ourselves what that name is. And the word of the angel was clear, wasn't it? And you will give him the name Jesus. Why? For he shall save his people from their sins.
How? In the cross. And when we take our eyes off Christ and off the nature of the atonement, then we will find that our zeal for evangelism is diminished. Let me give you a quote that will pin your ears back just a little from an amazing book written years ago by Smeaton, a Scottish theologian, and on the nature of the atonement. And this is what he writes in that book. To convert one sinner from his way is an event of greater importance than the deliverance of an entire kingdom from temporal evil. I'm going to say that to you again. I'd like to take this into all of our Christian colleges, and I want them to write me now a 2,000-word essay on Smeaton's quote. I want to hear from them. And I have a horrible sneaking suspicion that a significant number of them will challenge Smeaton's quote.
And I'll tell you why. Because either they have never understood or they have lost sight of the grandeur of the gospel. Here's the quote again. To convert one sinner from his way is an event of greater importance than the deliverance of a whole kingdom from temporal evil. Now, you must understand that Smeaton was not suggesting that the issues of temporal evil were irrelevant or that they should not be engaged in by the Christian community. Surely they must, for the Christian is about good news and good deeds. Good deeds foreordained for us to do, as it says in Ephesians 2.
But Smeaton is introducing proportionality to the thing. And if he was speaking in contemporary terms, he might say something like this. To convert one sinner from his way or from her way is an event of greater importance than the deliverance of sub-Saharan Africa from the problem of AIDS.
You see, that's where it really bites now, isn't it? To convert one sinner from their ways. Why do you think it was that Jesus went to individuals? Why is it that Jesus apparently and purposefully goes out of his way for encounters with individuals?
Well, I think because Smeaton's quote is right. And in John chapter 3, you have this encounter with a religious individual, with a man of some standing, of stature in the community. And then you turn into John chapter 4, as we've done now, and you find that the encounter is with somebody from, if you like, the opposite end of the spectrum. In 3, it's a man. In 4, it's a woman. In 3, she's religious and has some stature in the community. In 4, she is apparently irreligious and her standing in the community is questionable. And what is the fulcrum, if you like?
What is the pivot point in between 3 and 4? Well, let me suggest to you that it's the 16th verse of John chapter 3, and maybe the 17th as well. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. These verses are absolutely foundational to the whole development of John's Gospel, and I suggest to you are the very foundational pivot point in between these two encounters. If you want to put it in more personalized terms, then you could say that God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the woman at the well, but to save the woman at the well. He didn't send him to the well simply that the woman would discover what a horrible wretch she was, but in order that she might discover what a wonderful Savior Jesus is. Now, if we prize this kind of thing, then surely we ought to be ever-increasingly committed to asking God the Father to make us more like his son Jesus, who was preoccupied with the Gospel. Jesus, from the very beginning of his ministry, is preoccupied with the Gospel. I will get back to John 4 here in a moment, but I'm waggling the club a little on the tea, I admit that. And some of you are saying, why don't you hit the ball? Well, I'll hit it in just a moment.
Just a couple more waggles. You remember at the very beginning of the ministry of Jesus, we're told how he has performed these miraculous signs. People have brought the sick to him and the demon-possessed.
The whole town, Mark says, has gathered at the door. Jesus has healed many of various diseases. He's driven out demons and so on. And then Mark says that very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went into a solitary place where he prayed. And his companions, these fledgling disciples, come and find him. And when they find him, they want him to know, Jesus, last night was fantastic. Everyone is looking for you. Your mission is off to a tremendous start. I mean, the whole town was gathered outside the door.
The crowds are here in droves. It's just ripe for the picking. And Jesus replied, let's go somewhere else.
What? Well, why would we go anywhere else? The market is ripe here. No, no, we need to go and open up other areas. Let us go somewhere else to the nearby villages.
Now listen to this. So that I can preach there also, that is why I have come. Remember Luke 4? He sent me to preach good news to the poor.
So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons. I resist the temptation to have another sidebar on the nature of preaching at this point in the 20th century. Then we'll leave that for another day and another time. Let's get to John 4 before we run out of time in its entirety. First of all, in fact, I have three points. Number one, the encounter. Number two, the impact.
And number three, a lesson or two. First of all, the encounter. The encounter between Jesus and this lady.
We didn't read it. And instead of listening in on the conversation, as it is reported in the third person by John, I want to suggest to you that it might come across with a little more vibrancy, if only we could have the lady here herself to tell it in her own words. And remarkably, I've managed to get her. And here I is. Now, this is really going to stretch your imagination. Last night, you had to imagine a picture. Now you have to imagine that I am the woman of the well. Okay.
Try your best. Close your eyes, waggle your head twice, and then listen up. It started out for me the way most days do, just a routine trip to the well. I always go there by myself, not because I want to, but because I have to.
I go in the middle of the day when it's hot and sticky and lonely. So you'd understand when I say that I was caught off guard, even by the presence of someone else there, and even more so when the individual proved to be a man, and then when he spoke to me. I found myself immediately recalling. I said, hey, we don't do that. You're a man, I'm a woman, kind of, and you are a Jew, and I'm a Samaritan, and we don't really converse. But he aroused my curiosity because he created the sensation that I was the one in need of the water, although he was the one who was asking for a drink of water. It really didn't make any sense to me because he had no way of getting water out of the well, and that was why he had said to me, could I have a drink of water? In fact, I actually asked him if he thought he was greater than our forefather who built this well, but he let that go. He just pointed to the well and he said, everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst again. Well, I said, sign me up for that.
I like that program because I don't want to have to keep coming back to this well to draw water. But you know when you sense that there's more to it all than meets the eye, that there is something behind it all, some more substantial matter that you're not grasping? That's the notion that I had.
That's how I felt. And it was then, and right out of the blue, that he says to me, go call your husband and come back. Well, my first reaction was, which husband does he want me to call? But all I could get out was, I have no husband. Well, you know, he didn't try and probe.
He didn't try and wring any of the details out of me, any of the messy bits and pieces of my past. In fact, it quickly became clear that he knew it all, that he could see right into me. And I immediately said to him, I can see that you must be a prophet. And indeed, I started with a question about where you would go if you were worshiping God. Should you go where the Samaritans usually go? Or you should go where the Jews go?
Is it Gerizim or is it Jerusalem? And he quickly set all that aside. He said that really that wasn't the issue. In fact, the story was that God was seeking us. Well, I said to him, let's just fold this up now.
Why don't we wait until the Christ, the Messiah comes? He'll explain everything. And it was then, without so much batting an eyelid, that he looked at me and he said, that's me, the one speaking to you.
I'm the Messiah, speaking to me, a no-named Samaritan woman, at this point in my life, a broken series of failed beginnings and shattered hopes, speaking to me, the Messiah meeting me, knowing me. Well, just then all his friends came back, blustering in around the well and asking who had the turkey on rye and all of that kind of stuff. And I realized it was over, so I left my water pot. I left it right back there at the well, and I came back here as fast as I could. And I've come back right here to you, to my friends and to my community.
I've come right back to my town here. And I want to say to you, could this be the Messiah? Why don't you come out? Let you come out and meet him. You come and meet this man.
He told me everything I ever did. That's the encounter. Now we go to the impact, back into the words of John, as he recounts it for us. When you consider this woman's history of relationships, for her to reappear in the town shouting, Come see a man, is ironic, isn't it? After all, that was the thing she was notorious for in the town. You know?
What is this? The seventh man shouts somebody. She's on number seven now. Well, there was a sense in which he was on number seven. But this man was like no other man. This man was someone entirely different. And the impact of the encounter with the man is clearly seen as you look at your text. Verse 28, she issues the invitation.
Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Do you think this might be the Messiah? Verse 30, they came out of the town and made their way towards him. You know, when we've dreamt up all of our most strategic plans for evangelism, and when we've conceived of all that needs to be done necessarily, God just comes in and picks up a no-name lady at a well and says, Look at this for evangelism. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg, and Alistair is here with something he'd like to talk to us about today.
Thank you, Bob. For 30 years, our mission at Truth for Life has been to make Christ known through the clear, relevant teaching of God's Word. And if you've spent time with us listening to the program and reading our resources, my prayer is that the teaching has drawn you into a saving relationship with Jesus. By God's grace and through the faithful support of Truth partners, others from around the world have also come to know and trust in Christ through our program. As I step into a new season of ministry, I'm excited to devote more time to Truth for Life, continuing what I've been called to do, which is to teach the Bible and proclaim the gospel. In this next chapter, I'm asking God to open doors to new opportunities to equip pastors, reach the next generation, expand our reach internationally, and most importantly, to see unbelievers become the committed followers of the Lord Jesus. Our vision at Truth for Life is to press on boldly, to continue bringing biblical truth to a world that needs it as much as ever before. This vision belongs to all of us who long to lead others to Christ.
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