S. H. A. R. E.
October 14, 2012
John 4:1-26
Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)
Jesus and the Samaritan Woman
4 When Jesus knew that the Pharisees heard He was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (though Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were), 3 He left Judea and went again to Galilee. 4 He had to travel through Samaria, 5 so He came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the property that Jacob had given his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, worn out from His journey, sat down at the well. It was about six in the evening.
7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
“Give Me a drink,” Jesus said to her, 8 for His disciples had gone into town to buy food.
9 “How is it that You, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” she asked Him. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.
10 Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would ask Him, and He would give you living water.”
11 “Sir,” said the woman, “You don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do You get this ‘living water’? 12 You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are You? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.”
13 Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again—ever! In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up within him for eternal life.”
15 “Sir,” the woman said to Him, “give me this water so I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.”
16 “Go call your husband,” He told her, “and come back here.”
17 “I don’t have a husband,” she answered.
“You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus said. 18 “For you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
19 “Sir,” the woman replied, “I see that You are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, yet you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”
21 Jesus told her, “Believe Me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. 23 But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. Yes, the Father wants such people 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 explain everything to us.”
26 “I am He,” Jesus told her, “the One speaking to you.”
Do you remember the firsts in your life? Do you remember your first car? Your first love? Your first paycheck? Do you remember the first time you kissed your wife, or kissed your husband? What about the first time you remember seeing the sunrise, or looked out across the horizon on the seashore?
Do you remember when you first accepted Christ and promised to follow Him in obedience? New things energize us and give us some meaning along this journey of life. When something is new we spend a lot of time telling others about it. We want everyone to know the joyous wonder we feel.
Our family, well most of our family, enjoys Disney World. Even now, after having gone on numerous occasions, you can find a little bit of the old magic, the old wonder when you walk through those gates and venture into a world of fantasy and fun.
Why should the newness of life found in salvation be any different than the pretend world of an amusement park? What stops us from remembering the fresh sense of belonging we felt when beginning the journey with our Lord?
There are many reasons why we might choose not to go out witnessing. As we noticed last Sunday sometimes we are just simply afraid. It’s frightening stand in front of someone and share the life changing truth of the gospel with them. Let’s take some of that fear away today! Let’s learn to SHARE.
The S is for Start Conversations
7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
“Give Me a drink,” Jesus said to her, 8 for His disciples had gone into town to buy food.
Conversations are not some newfangled touchy-feely form of evangelism. Conversations are time tested ways to introduce the Gospel that were modeled by none other than Jesus Himself. In fact, it was Jesus preferred method to tell people what He wanted them to hear.
It was not some scary method, there were no passages to memorize, and there were no complicated formulas that Jesus used to show them “The Way”. He simply talked with people. Maybe he started with “Hey, how are you”, or “Bad dry spell we are having”, or even “I’m a little bit thirsty, would you give me some water?”
There was nothing threatening or controversial in the approach Jesus took. It was friendly, it was folksy, and it was just a little bit in line with His own teaching that people need to care about people.
Look at who Christ is talking to in our passage of scripture. He’s talking to a SAMARITAN! Oh my, what a departure from the traditional method used by the religious leaders of the day. They wouldn’t have been caught dead talking to this woman. It would have offended every single one of their sensibilities.
Not only was she a Samaritan, she was a woman. A Samaritan woman—a person that most men in Jesus time would have viewed as somewhat less than a person. Yet He initiated a conversation with her. He started TALKING TO HER! He didn’t wonder what others would think, He didn’t consider the possible negative outcome, He didn’t even take a poll or discuss it with His senior leadership circle. He simply started talking to her.
What does that mean to us today at South Peninsula in 2012? What insight can we gain from this “rebellious act of audacity”? We gain an insight into how we are supposed to do it?
Who among us knows someone we come into contact with that we can just talk to? Who among us has those people we bump up against in our daily lives that we can just strike up a conversation with? It’s not hard to do if we just get started on it.
Everywhere you go there is someone you can talk to. A stranger in the line at the store; the person who rings up your purchase; someone at the coffee shop or the waitress in the restaurant.
You don’t have to open with “Are you going to Hell”, why not just say “That’s a pretty dress you are wearing” or “How are you doing today?”. One thing Samantha and I were just recently discussing is when someone says “How are you?” and you respond with “Well, how are you?” it often catches them off guard as if they were not expecting you to respond, and certainly not to respond with a show of caring toward them.
Want to get started following Christ’s command to SHARE? Begin by Starting conversations.
The H is for Help by Being in the Right Place
3 He left Judea and went again to Galilee. 4 He had to travel through Samaria, 5 so He came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the property[b] that Jacob had given his son Joseph.
In verse three we see something amazing happen. Jesus wandered off script. He got out of the expected box and changed the dynamics of the situation. The Jews would normally have gone out of their way to avoid travel through inhabited portions of Samaria, because that lessened the chance they might run into some of the dreaded Samaritans.
Jesus changed things up by going into the heart of the enemy camp. He took the gospel to the Samaritan woman, with a purpose and intentionality. It was not an accidental encounter, or mere happenstance. Jesus went to Samaria with the intention of meeting and
The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between rails) is four feet, eight-and-one-half inches.
Why such an odd number? Because that's the way they built them in England, and American railroads were built by British expatriates.
Why did the English adopt that particular gauge? Because the people who built the pre-railroad tramways used that gauge.
They in turn were locked into that gauge because the people who built tramways used the same standards and tools they had used for building wagons, which were set on a gauge of four feet, eight-and-one-half inches.
"Why were wagons built to that scale? Because with any other size, the wheels did not match the old wheel ruts on the roads.
"So who built these old rutted roads?
"The first long-distance highways in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been in use ever since. The ruts were first made by Roman war chariots. Four feet, eight-and-one-half inches was the width a chariot needed to be to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses."
Maybe "that's the way it's always been" isn't the great excuse some people believe it to be.
Clark Cothern Tecumseh, Michigan
If we facilitate, encourage, and even advocate change we will find new opportunities to evangelize. Remember, don’t let that big church word scare you away. Changing our patterns, changing the places we frequent give us new opportunities to strike up a conversation with people. Not only do we have the opportunity to share the gospel, we also have the blessing to meet new interesting people to add to our circle of friends.
Make it your mission to explore new places and new opportunities. Join a gym or an exercise group. Go to a music concert, or to see the symphony. Shop in a new store, or try the neighborhood shop instead of the big box store. Go to the library, or the little bookstore on the corner. Go to the fall festival, or the spring fling. Go places where you will meet new people. You will broaden your life, while at the same time placing yourself in a position to be used for God’s glory.
The A is for Asking the Right Questions
Jesus didn't jump in with "What do you think about the Messiah”, instead he held a conversation with the woman and he asked pertinent questions.
16 “Go call your husband,” He told her, “and come back here.”
He was chatting with her, and perhaps we don’t have the entire verbatim transcript of his discussion, or maybe we do. It matters very little every syllable our Lord uttered, what matters is that he was talking with her. Not talking AT her, but talking WITH her. In the course of the conversation it turned to personal matters, a turn of events that is hardly uncommon when we are trying to get to know someone. Unlike Jesus, we don’t have the luxury of already knowing the answer to our questions, so we have to get our information the old fashioned way. We talk about it. We learn about our fellow human being through a discourse as old as time itself. We talk to each other.
Tell people about your day, or ask about theirs. Discuss the sports scores, or the tropical storm brewing in the Atlantic. Ask people about their children, or grandchildren. Share with them about your own family. Not in a creepy “I’m a serial killer” fashion, but in that “Hello Friend!” kind of neighborly curiosity.
The best way, and the most effective way, to witness is to just be yourself. Be open, be honest, be friendly, and be approachable. We’ve lost a lot in recent years as we have become more insular as a society. I recall a time when the front porch was the gathering place, and people would wave at one another, and stroll up and carry on conversations. We don’t do that anymore, but we do frequent coffee shops or juice bars. We do go to the restaurant and the grocery. We do come into contact with people every single day.
The R is for Remembering to Listen
19 “Sir,” the woman replied, “I see that You are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain,[g] yet you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”
We touched on this in the “A” is for asking section. When you are talking with someone, conversation is understood to be between more than one person. In other words you don’t have a conversation when it’s all about you!
Teenage prostitutes, during interviews in a San Francisco study, were asked: "Is there anything you needed most and couldn't get?" Their response, invariably preceded by sadness and tears was unanimous: "What I needed most was someone to listen to me. Someone who cared enough to listen to me."
Jim Reapsome, Homemade.
What did they need the most? It wasn’t iPods and cellphones, it wasn’t a platinum credit card, and a fancy car. It wasn’t new shoes, or tickets to the movie. All they needed, all they wanted was someone to listen.
Sometimes the conversation is not even the one you want to have. Jesus wasn’t there to debate places of worship with her. We wasn’t there to have a theological argument. He was there for her. She wanted to talk about these things and he let her do it, then he addressed the real issues in her life. Real issues that you and I will only learn about when we LISTEN!
We can always find something to argue about. We can argue about whether to say Amen (Long A-men) or amen (ah-men). We can fight about believing the teachings of John Calvin, we can fight about what side of the auditorium the piano is on. None of this matters. NONE OF IT MATTERS!
What matters is that people outside of these doors are hurting. Life is getting the best of them, and some are at their wits end. They want someone to listen to their problems, and we must be the people that listen.
The E is for Ending with Jesus
25 The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah[i] is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will explain everything to us.”
26 “I am He,” Jesus told her, “the One speaking to you.”
The whole point of the conversation with the woman at the well was for Jesus to introduce Himself to her. The culmination of the discussion was the revelation of Jesus that He was Messiah.
When we are witnessing in the method we have been discussing all morning, the final part of our conversations need to be brought around to Christ. We should always end with Jesus, even when we start with “Roll Tide Roll!”
We SHARE Christ by sharing of ourselves. There is no fantastic formula, it’s really just as simple as reaching out to people. It is about
S: Starting Conversations
H: Help by Being in the Right Place
A: Asking the Right Questions
R: Remembering to Listen
E: Ending With Jesus
SHARE! That’s all we are asked to do as Christians. We are asked to SHARE. So let’s take the fear and mystery out of evangelism, and just start to SHARE.
