How Does Jesus Teach Us How To Evangelize and Interact with People Through His Conversation With a Samaritan Woman?? #74

Welcome into another episode of the Bible Reading Podcast. In order to give you a break from what everybody is talking about, the only time I am going to say the c-word is right now: CORONAVIRUS. Check out yesterday’s episode #73 if that wasn’t enough for you. Today’s Bible readings include Exodus 25 (the tabernacle), Proverbs 1 (WHAT HAPPENED TO PSALMS?!), 2 Corinthians 13 (Paul’s farewell), and our focus passage, which is John 4 – Jesus talking with the woman at the well. Today’s episode is probably going to be a short one, because I have just finished writing and sending the longest email any pastor has ever sent to a church leadership team in the history of the world. If you are interested in reading it, I plan to publish it in a special 25 volume collector’s hardback set after the current crisis abates. You can have it for the low, low price of $299.99…but wait -there’s more!! Actually, no, there’s not. Let’s get started. We will read John 4, and then come back and discuss:

10 lessons that we can learn from Jesus in how to interact with people. 

1. ENGAGE. Don’t just sit there – even when it is awkward. Vs. 7. “Give Me a drink,” Jesus said to her, 8 for His disciples had gone into town to buy food.  Note: You don’t have to engage with everybody. John 5: beggar at Bethesda pool. Sometimes engaging deeply with just a few people is better than engaging superficially with everybody.
   
2. Be guided by BIBLICAL rules not by HUMAN rules and traditions. Vs. 8 “9 “How is it that You, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?”  AND vs 27, “27 Just then His disciples arrived, and they were amazed that He was talking with a woman. ”
   
   COL 2: “20 If you died with the Messiah to the elemental forces of this world, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations: 21 “Don’t handle, don’t taste, don’t touch”? 22 All these regulations refer to what is destroyed by being used up; they are commands and doctrines of men. 23 Although these have a reputation of wisdom by promoting ascetic practices, humility, and severe treatment of the body, they are not of any value in curbing self-indulgence.”  vs. 16 also: “16 Therefore, don’t let anyone judge you in regard to food and drink or in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of what was to come; the substance is the Messiah.”
   
   What is the Bible rule? One of them: 1 Timothy 5:”Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, and with all propriety, the younger women as sisters.”
   
3. Ignore racist traditions that aren’t biblical  “For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.” vs 9.  Interracial marriage, etc.
   
4. You don’t have to use a canned opening…conversationally point to Jesus and spiritual things. “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.” He didn’t use a canned or cliche’d opening like: “if you died tonight, where would you go?”  Jesus talked to the woman, and brought up the good news QUICKLY and Engagingly.
   
5. Similar: The Gospel is not a memorized set of propositions. Almost every time in Scripture, when the good news of Jesus is shared – it is shared differently, but EVERY time pointing back to Jesus. “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.”
   
6. Be open to what can be called Prophetic evangelism: vs 16. “16 “Go call your husband,” He told her, “and come back here.” LISTEN and be led by the Spirit. 1 corinthians 14: “23 Therefore, if the whole church assembles together and all are speaking in other languages and people who are uninformed or unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your minds? 24 But if all are prophesying and some unbeliever or uninformed person comes in, he is convicted by all and is judged by all. 25 The secrets of his heart will be revealed, and as a result he will fall facedown and worship God, proclaiming, “God is really among you.”
   
   You might say – I don’t believe in such things, I’m a cessationist! Well, I’m not, but Charles Spurgeon at least thought he was a cessationist:

A man was won for Christ because the preacher pointed to him and said, “There is a man sitting there who is a shoemaker; he keeps his shop open on Sundays; it was open last Sabbath morning. He took ninepence and there was fourpence profit on it; his soul is sold to Satan for fourpence.” The man was afraid to go and hear Spurgeon again for fear he might tell the people more about him, for what he said at first was all true. But at last he came, and the Lord met with him.
One Sunday evening Mr. Spurgeon, pointing to the gallery, said, “Young man, the gloves you have in your pocket are not paid for.” After the service a young fellow came beseeching him not to say anything more about it, and the circumstances led to his conversion…. He once said that there was a man in the gallery listening to him with a gin bottle in his pocket. It so happened that there was such a man, and he was startled into conversion. 

7. It is rarely – if ever – necessary to CONDEMN.  “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.”

*** John 3:17 “For God did not send His Son into the world that He might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

*** Luke 6:37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

*** John 8: “10 When Jesus stood up, He said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 “No one, Lord,” she answered.
“Neither do I condemn you,” said Jesus.”

8. Warnings, however, are appropriate, when delivered in a Christ-like way. (HOW HE DELIVERED THEM)  John 8:““Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.”  John 5:14 (to the Bethesda/paralyzed man, “14 After this, Jesus found him in the temple complex and said to him, “See, you are well. Do not sin anymore, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.” ”)   Jesus rarely seems to begin with the sin, unless he was dealing with hard-hearted religious leaders. The Gospel comes first.

9. Jesus breaks down ALL dividing walls – your words should too. “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.” 

10. Point people to Jesus. “26 “I am He,” (the Messiah) Jesus told her, “the One speaking to you.”” (Jesus pointed people to Himself)
28 Then the woman left her water jar, went into town, and told the men, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could this be the Messiah?” 30 They left the town and made their way to Him….