The Road Less Traveled

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED

John 4:1-42

S: Evangelism

Th: My Life as God’s Light

Pr: GET THE GOOD NEWS OUT!

?: How?

KW: Manners

TS: We will find in John 4:1-42, four manners that describe how we get the good news out.

The _____ manner that describes how we get the good news out is by…

I. GOING, NOT WAITING (1-6)

II. ENGAGING, NOT FORCING (7-26)

III. LOVING, NOT PREJUDGING (27-30, 39-42)

IV. SERVING, NOT SELF-SERVING (31-38)

RMBC 6/3/01 AM

INTRODUCTION:

ILL Notebook: Church (franchise)

A family was in vacation in Montana visiting the grandparents, and when the grandmother drove her car past a church in the small town, she pointed to it, told the children that it was the First Baptist Church. “It must be a franchise,” her eight-year-old grandson said. “We’ve got one of those in our town too.”

Well, there are Baptist churches all around, that is for sure.

But let me ask you this question…

1. Does the world need another Baptist church?

That’s a thought-provoking question being asked by this Baptist pastor, isn’t it?

After all, the Lord has directed me into three churches with the name Baptist in it—two of which were called “First Baptist Church.”

I am fairly committed to being a Baptist.

Let me switch gears for a moment…

Do you remember that poem by Robert Frost called “The Road Less Traveled”?

ILL “The Road Less Traveled” by Robert Frost

Part of it goes like this…

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no foot had trodden black

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere in ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

Took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

What I want to suggest to you this morning, is that this is the kind of church that is needed in this world…

2. What the world needs is a church that is willing to take the road less traveled (Matthew 7:13-14).

Listen to what Jesus says in Matthew…

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

There is a narrow way, and only a few find it.

It is the road less traveled.

TRANSITION:

But…

1. Does anyone care?

What I mean here is that there are a lot of people that feel lost in today’s world.

They wander about looking for meaning.

ILL Janice Ian

Years ago, Janice Ian wrote a song that expressed this.

She sang…

I learned the truth at 17

That love was made for beauty queens

and high school girls with clear skinned smiles...

And those of us with ravaged faces,

lacking in the social graces,

desperately remained at home

inventing lovers on the phone...

those of us who knew the pain

of valentines that never came,

and those whose names were never called

when choosing sides for basketball…

That is a song of pain.

But there is an answer to, “Does anyone care?”

The answer is “yes.”

God cares…and because God cares…we have the responsibility to…

2. GET THE GOOD NEWS OUT!

We have good news to tell!

You know…there are a lot of churches that believe in the good news, and yet, they don’t act on it.

For interestingly, the church that shares the good news has become the road less traveled.

This is a challenge to us as a church.

Are we going to be a church that actually gets the good news out?

Jesus is a great example to us in this, and in this story of the woman at the well, we learn how to get the good news out.

So…

3. We will find in John 4, four approaches that describe how we get the good news out.

OUR STUDY:

I. The first approach that we must take to get the good news out is to be GOING, NOT WAITING (1-6).

(4) Now he had to go through Samaria.

Jesus took the road less traveled…Samaria.

He did not choose a popular path.

He did not choose the easy path.

But He had to go through Samaria.

The culture and religion of Samaria were distinct from the rest of Israel because the relationship between Jews and Samaritans was definitely strained.

The religious barriers had been erected for 400 years and only worsened through the centuries.

So much so that the Jews would not pass through Samaria on the path between Judea and Galilee.

They would go east, cross the Jordan River, go north or south, bypass Samaria, and then cross the Jordan again when they neared their destination.