Personal Evangelist (Part 2 of 2)

In the Gospel of John in chapter 4 we read about an encounter between Jesus and a woman who was retrieving water from a well in Samaria. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg shows us how Jesus used this visit to demonstrate to his disciples how to engage in personal evangelism.

Alistair begins by imagining how the Samaritan woman might have summarized her day. 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, 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. In fact, it quickly became clear that he knew it all. 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 worshipping 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's she saying today? Well, I just heard her coming through the market. She's going through the market, saying, I want you to come and meet a man. Oh, goodness, she said, Five husbands, she's got a live-in lover, and she wants us to meet a man.

What is this? The seventh man, shouts somebody. She's on number seven now.

Well, there was a sense in which she 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.

That's remarkable, isn't it? I mean, why would you even listen to her in the first place? What street cred does she have to have people put down their task for the day and to start walking out of the town? It makes you think of hymns like, I know not how the Spirit moves, convincing men of sin, revealing Jesus through the Word, creating faith in 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. And they all came out of the town, verse 30. And in verse 39, we're told that many of the Samaritans from the town believed in Jesus, believed in Jesus, because of the woman's testimony. And then in verse 41, look at the impact, and because of his words, many more became believers. That is, as a result of Jesus now spending time in the town with the people as per their invitation. And then the grand finale in relationship to impact in verse 42.

They said to the woman, We no longer believe just because of what you said. Now we've heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is—notice the phrase—the Savior of the world. This is evangelism. It is not the gospel to tell people that there are benefits that attach if they will believe the gospel. It is not the gospel to tell people that there are great tragedies that await them if they reject the gospel.

The gospel is to tell people who Jesus is, why he came, what he did, why it matters, and that he is the self-proclaimed Savior of the world. I see people fishing here all the time. As I go home every day, there's a little group there. They might as well be eating donuts for all they're catching.

I roll the window down every day and say, Would you like me to get you some donuts while you're sitting there taking the sun? Because the poles don't move. There's nothing happening.

I don't really know why they go there. I say, Do you catch any? No. How about yesterday?

No. Well, what's happening? Well, we influenced a few, you know.

Well, so what? Who gives a rip about you influencing a few? Have you led anybody to Jesus? Have you taken the opportunity to encounter somebody with the claims of Christ?

Oh, no, no, no. But I influenced a few. I told them about the importance of family life as a Christian. Well, the Hindus know a lot about family life as a Hindu. And I told them a lot about the importance of premarital morality. Well, very good. And so do the Islamic friends in my community, and many of them are doing a lot better with that than the average Christian youth group in the local church. So you see, when we've done all of those things, we still haven't done what the woman did. She says, I want you to come and meet a man. Jesus, the personal evangelist, produces personal evangelists—those who, in the everyday, run-of-the-mill events of life, whether as a biochemist or as a bank teller or as a mum or as a carpenter or whatever we might be, are simply living out the gospel in a way that might cause people to ask a reason for the hope that we have.

Hence the impact. And I can only imagine that the two days that Jesus spent in this town, as a result of the opportunity opened up for him by this woman, were days in which he explained to the people all that the prophets had said, in much the same way as he did, as we discover in Luke chapter 24. I wonder, did he turn to Isaiah and let these dear people know that the prophets voiced the Word of God when he said, Isaiah 45, 22, Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth. For I am God, and there is no other. And what do you think he meant by that?

And they said, Well, we're not entirely sure. Well, then he led them through to the fulfillment. The time is now fulfilled, he said. And he began to proclaim the kingdom of God. In other words, all that God has purposed to do finds its expression now in this Galilean carpenter, Jesus, as he makes his way towards the cross. It is, loved ones, the message that we are called to take across the street and around the world—namely, that Jesus is the only Savior, because Jesus is the only one qualified to save. And one day, at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Well, the encounter is there. The impact, at least we get a start on it.

What shall we say, then, in terms of lessons learned? Well, it is in light of this that Jesus takes his disciples and uses it characteristically as a teaching moment. My food, he says, verse 34, is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. You can imagine them saying to each other, I wonder what he means, finish his work. I wonder when his work will be finished.

I'm going to finish the Father's work. But for now, he says, I don't want you going around saying, you know, in four months, I think we could have a pretty good harvest. He says, we understand that in the physical realm, but I want to tell you, if you open your eyes and look at the fields, you'll find they're ripe for harvest. And I've always been intrigued by the idea that—and of course, this is conjecture—but the idea that since this is taking place in the context of the woman having gone into the town and calling the people out of the town, that the people coming out of the town, the men dressed in white with their normal headgear on, with the golden band off and around holding it in place, as he says this to his disciples, he may actually be pointing to the great mass exodus that is coming out of the town. And in the distance, the bobbing heads of the people may actually look like grain bobbing in the breeze.

And he says, if you'll look right now, you will see it's ripe for harvest. Look at these people. Look at all those lonely people. Where do they all come from? Look at all those lonely people.

Where do they all belong? You remember God said of his people, My people have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and they have dug out their own cisterns, broken cisterns, which can hold no water. They have forsaken me, the spring of living water.

That's bad enough. But now they've determined to create their own power source. Now they've determined that there is water from another source that may quench their thirsts.

And if his own people were doing it, those who knew nothing of him were doing it. And surely it is the story of our generation to look out on the lives of those longing for love, longing for freedom, and digging out pathetic little watering holes that will dry up faster than they can dig them, and covering their eyes and putting their fingers in their ears to disregard the message of one who provides living water whereby you will never thirst again, gobbling up silly books on the New York Times bestsellers list, fascinated by the cries of the atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens, swallowing up New Age mantras that are frankly ridiculous at their core, hastening to believe not nothing but to believe everything while rejecting any notion that in this Jesus that this lady met there is that spring of living water that will quench the thirst of their souls. Our friends and neighbors are there to be met, there to be loved, there to be spoken to, there to be intrigued. Our congregations need to be marked in their pulpits and in their pews by a sense, if you like—as my friend Tim Keller puts it—a sense of gentle irony, not a sense of bombastic privilege. If you go to certain churches, you will find that from the pulpit the person speaks as if there is no possibility of there being unbelievers present. So they speak of unbelievers as if they are somehow a breed that are out there. And, of course, legitimately in many cases, because an unbeliever hasn't darkened the door of the place for a hundred years, it would seem. And so, if you do bring an unbeliever, you immediately feel uncomfortable, because they're spoken about in the third person as an it or a something or a whatever.

And the way in which the story comes across sounds presumptuous, may sound bombastic. It doesn't have anything of the gentle, sensitive, initiative-taking, Jesus flavor to it that begins with, Excuse me, but do you think you could give me a drink of water out of this well, please? Do you know what a great line it is, both in business and in interpersonal relationships to begin? Could you help me with something?

Now, I'm not going to tell a salesman how to sell, but I've discovered that in the vast majority of places, it is a non-threatening way to begin anything. May I ask you for your help? Could I have a drink of water? Well, of course you may. Now we've made a contact.

Now we have an opportunity to go forward. This is different from walking around with a Thomson Chain reference Bible and giving people a good over-the-back-of-the-head with seven of your favorite verses, or suggesting to them that there are all these books that if they were a sensible person, they would want immediately to read. Of course they wouldn't want them to read. Do you not realize that the unconverted are unaware of the fact of their blindness until God, by His grace, shows them that they're blind? They're not sitting there going, I'm a blind man. I'm a blind woman.

Could you please help me? No! They're saying, I see everything perfectly. I'm not a loony like you.

I'm not a loony Christian like you that's got this weird take on the world. I can see it perfectly. And so we have to say, Lord, help my son to see that he can't see. And then when he sees that he can't see, then we'll go from there. And the lesson is clear too, isn't it?

And with this we must finish. In nature, it's unusual to reap where you haven't sown. The farmer sows, and it's his field, and he goes out to reap. He doesn't expect to come along the road and find a combine harvester working his way through his fields. Hey, I sowed that! What are you doing reaping that?

That makes perfect sense. But Jesus says in the spiritual realm, it's actually usual that one reaps where another has sown. And I'm not sure just exactly what he has in mind when he says, others have done the hard work, and you there entered into the fruits of their labors. Is that the work of the prophets before them?

I'm not sure. But what he makes the point, it's clear. Let the sower not complain, and let the reaper remain humble. It's all links in a chain.

One can plant, another can water, but only God can make things grow. I wonder what happened to this lady. I'm sure you do too, if you have an inquisitive mind. Now, we don't need to know, because if we needed to know, it would be in the Bible, and there's nothing we need to know that's left out, and there's nothing in that we don't need. But I still wonder what happened to her. I wonder, did she show up in Jerusalem on the day the sun turned dark? I wonder, did she stand with other women, brave women, around the cross? I wonder, did she look up and hear the man on the middle cross cry out, It is finished? And then I wonder, did she say, Oh, I get it now.

I get it now. He knew everything I'd ever done, and yet his blood has canceled everyone. O Lord, such grace to qualify me as your own. Jesus, the humble servant, the compassionate shepherd, the personal evangelist. If you're listening to the weekend edition of Truth for Life, Alistair Begg will conclude his message in just a minute with prayer. Our current series is called To Know Christ. If you'd like to download the nine messages in this series for free or purchase the CDs at our cost, go to truthforlife.org and search for To Know Christ. In addition to this Bible teaching program, Truth for Life offers a variety of other materials, including books available for purchase at our cost without any markup, along with audio and video studies from Alistair on CD, DVD, and USB.

If you'd prefer, you can download the audio and video messages for free. Today, we want to let you know about a book we're featuring written by pastor and blogger Tim Challies. Tim's book is titled Epic, an around the world journey through Christian history. One of the most encouraging things a believer can realize is that our faith is grounded in history. You've often heard Alistair say that when we read the Bible, we're learning about real people who lived in a real place at a real time. Well, this book, Epic, gives us a glimpse into some of these people used by God by looking at 33 artifacts that have played a role in Christian history. Tim logged more than 180,000 miles traveling the globe to write this book. He found things like Charles Spurgeon's preaching rail, Billy Graham's traveling pulpit, even John Calvin's chair. The book includes dozens of colorful photographs and detailed descriptions for each item. These artifacts are not only intriguing, but they confirm God's faithfulness to his people down through the generations.

To find out how to request a copy of the book Epic, or to see a sample of the book, go online to truthforlife.org. And now to conclude today's message, Alistair leads us in prayer. And now, gracious God, we pray that all that is of yourself you will seal in our hearts and minds that you will draw those who don't believe to see their need of you, and we pray that your compassion and kindness may lead them to repentance. We ask your forgiveness when we are more preoccupied with our sandwiches and our fellowship than we are with those who have yet never heard of Jesus.

We don't say that to ourselves so that we can luxuriate in a guilt trip, but in order that it might be a stimulus to us. Hear the silent cries of our hearts, and let our prayers come unto you. For Jesus' sake we ask it.

Amen. Today we studied Jesus as a personal evangelist. Next time we'll look at Jesus' role as the suffering servant. I'm Bob Lapeen, hoping you can join us next weekend for the continuation of Alistair's series called To Know Christ. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.