Kingdom Growth, Jesus Style Series

INTRODUCTION

 I want to ask you an important question this morning. Raise your hand if you would like to see the Auburn Christian Church reach the lost people of our community.

 Reaching the community for Christ is the reason that we exist as a church. It should be the goal of each one of us to make one to make one. What that means is that we want to take people who do not know Christ, help them to become a disciple of Jesus and then get them to the point where they can go make disciples of others. The goal is spiritual reproduction.

 We have to understand that our job as a church does not stop once we put someone under the water. That is when we are to carry out the second part of the Great Commission, to teach them to observe all that Jesus commanded.

 One of the ways we can judge how we are doing, as a church is look at how many lost people are we winning to Christ. The other one is, are we helping people grow in their faith or in other words are we helping them to mature. All that we do should be focused in some way on those two areas.

 I talk a lot about church growth, but maybe I need to use a different term that better expresses what we are called to do, that would be Kingdom Growth.

 When I talk about growing the church, it can be misunderstood to mean that all I am out for is a large church. If that is how we see it, then one way we can make the church larger is to try to get people from other churches to come to our church. If people want to do that, that is fine, but that is not real kingdom growth and that should not be the focus of what we do.

 What that is in essence is moving fish from one bowl to the next.

 The real issue for us as a church is the issue of Kingdom growth. As a church are we helping the Kingdom of God to get larger and are we helping it to mature.

 We can grow in number without expanding the Kingdom any, but that is not what we want. We want to see new souls added to God’s family.

 Today as we take a final look at Jesus encounter with the woman at the well, we are going to look at Kingdom Growth, Jesus Style!

 We will look at the process of kingdom growth, the focus needed for kingdom growth to happen and the rewards of kingdom growth.

 This message today really goes to the heart of what each and every one of us who are Christians need to be doing.

SERMON

Kingdom growth, Jesus style:

I. INVOLVES A CHAIN-REACTION 27-30, 39-42

Kingdom growth involves a domino effect. This is what I call, “make one to make one”.

1. It starts with planting a seed by telling another person about the kingdom of God. V 27.

 In this whole story that we have been looking at we see that Jesus took the time to speak with this woman about the Kingdom. Jesus planted a seed in this woman that germinated very quickly.

 We are called to do a couple things in the kingdom growth process, we are to plant seeds and we are to water the seeds that other people have planted.

 If you are a farmer, you need to eventually put some seed in the ground if you want to have a harvest. You do want to spend the proper time preparing the ground, but at some point, you have to drop the seed in the ground.

 As far as kingdom growth is concerned, God only holds us responsible for planting and watering. In 1 Corinthians 3:6-9, we see that God gives the increase.

 If we plant and water all of our lives and not one seed blooms, God will bless us for the effort. God does not hold us accountable for how other people respond. If He did, Noah would have been in bog trouble after 120 years of preaching to no avail!

 We cannot discriminate as to who we will tell about Jesus and who we wouldn’t.

 The disciples we shocked that Jesus would be speaking with this woman who was not a Jew. Our church should be a haven of salvation for ALL people in the community no matter who they are or where they live.

 If you know a lost person, they are someone with which a seed needs to be planted.

2. Once a person accepts the message, their life and priorities change v 28