Sermon Tone Analysis

ATTENTION:

There’ve been all kinds of great missionaries in the history of the church.

If we started naming them, we’d not get stopped.

Who can forget the grandfather of missions, William Carey, or the great prayer warrior of missions, Hudson Taylor, or the great explorer of missions, David Livingstone.

Yet as great as they are, there’s one great missionary who outshines all others.

You read about Him in our text this morning.

It is Jesus.

In John 4:1, it says of Him:

Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John 2 (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples), 3 He left Judea and departed again to Galilee. 4 But He needed to go through Samaria.

Now you all know that going through Samaria was not normal.

Jews never did it because they hated Samarians.

To the Jew, they were unclean, religious traitors who deserved nothing but contempt.

Yet, Jesus, because of His great missionary heart was compelled to go through Samaria.

You see, there was a lady there waiting for Him.

She didn’t know it, but Christ was about to rock her world and change her whole town.

And it wasn’t just this hapless harlot that Jesus wanted to reach.

Quite honestly, Jesus’ burden was his alone.

His disciples did not share His sentiments nor His burden.

Which brings us to the second reason He was compelled to go through Samaria.

You see, He had a lesson to teach them about becoming missionaries.

After He has so effectively revealed Himself to this needy woman, His disciples return with their “take-out” order and bring their Master some food.

That’s where we pick up their story down in v 27 of this chapter:

And at this point His disciples came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman; yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why are You talking with her?” 28 The woman then left her waterpot, went her way into the city, and said to the men, 29 “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did.

Could this be the Christ?” 30 Then they went out of the city and came to Him. 31 In the meantime His disciples urged Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But He said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.”

33 Therefore the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?”34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.

35 Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’?

Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!

36 And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.

37 For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’

38 I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.”

In these verses Jesus begins to speak to His disciples about the importance of being missionaries.

Now I can’t really tell you they fully grasped what He told them.

In fact, we’d probably have to agree that this was just one of many conversations, but no one can deny that the disciples ended up becoming great missionaries.

In fact, they turned the world upside down.

That’s why I want you to listen this morning.

See, I know when I say the word “Missionary” something goes off in your heart that wants to resist.

The reason is that you don’t consider yourself to be in the “missionary” league when it comes to spirituality.

You see missionaries as being super-saints that walk on water.

I want you to know, this morning, that you can really become a missionary.

In fact, if you know the Lord, you’re already one, you just don’t know it.

Jesus describes for His disciples in these verses exactly how they can become effective missionaries.

Listen.

And others of us want to avoid the whole “missionary” idea because of the responsibility.

We know that being involved in reaching out around the world could get very costly.

It might cost us our career; it might cost us our money; it might even cost us our son or daughter.

We seek to slide through our Christian lives never really stopping to think about what our neglect is costing us.

But here’s the problem: Witnessless Christianity is a farce.

Don’t take it from me.

Listen to a real expert: - DVD PENN GILLETTE

Now here’s a guy who makes no apology for being an atheist but he says it so clearly.

“How much to you have to hate a person to not warn them about hell, if you really believe they are going there.”

If you really know the Lord, you can become a missionary.

No, I have to take it further: If you really know the Lord you will become a missionary, you won’t be able to help yourself.

Now I know my saying that probably makes a few of you nervous.

There are some in this room who have never led anyone else to Jesus Christ and you know it.

When I start saying that being a believer will always lead you to be a missionary, you want to disagree and you may even get defensive because you know that you’re not.

But I just want to encourage you to drop the defensiveness this morning and really listen.

There’s an unbelievable harvest waiting for you, if you’ll just open your eyes and see it.

You really can become the missionary Christ has in mind for you to be, but there will have to be some changes.

The first one you see illustrated right here in this chapter.

In the first place, if you want to me a missionary you must have

DIV 1: A CHANGE IN PRIORITY

EXPLANATION

Missonaries are peculiar people.

Now it’s not that they are strange or crazy, its that their value system is different.

In this passage of scripture when you observe the difference in Jesus and His disciples it is immediately apparent that He had a different value system.

For one thing, he valued people over prejudice.

Hey!

If it had been up to His disciples they would not have even gone through Samaria.

The Jews hated the Samarians for at least a couple of reasons: For one thing, when the Kingdom of Israel had split, the northern Kingdom had developed its own amalgamated religion.

When the people of that Northern Kingdom went into captivity, the King of Assyria, in order to assure his conquest, had immigrated some of his own people to the territory.

The result of this mixture was a new people whom the people of Judah called the “Samaritans.”

And they hated these people.

They saw them as half-breed traitors who only held to the Pentateuch instead of to the whole of scripture.

You see the hatred reflected in the Samaritan woman’s reply when Jesus asks her for a drink of water.

She says, “How is it that a Jew asks me for a cup of water?”

In other words, there was such a hatred between them that even asking for a cup of water was out of the question.

And it wasn’t just the fact that this woman was a Samaritan that made this conversation unlikely in the mind of his Disciples.

It was the fact that she was a woman.

In fact, when the disciples return with the Big Mac’s, the Bible says in 4:27 that they “marveled that He talked with a woman.”

Did you know that women were held in such low regard in this time that some rabbis said that to talk too much with a woman, even with one’s own wife was a waste of time.

(Husbands just look straight ahead and don’t say a word.

Even a twitch of your eyebrow could get you killed right now).

These rabbis said that talking with a woman diverted one’s attention from the study of the Torah and could, potentially, be so great an evil that it would lead to hell.

In the eyes of some rabbis, teaching your daughter the Torah was more inappropriate than selling your own daughter into prostitution.

These disciples returned from their fast food run to find two of their greatest prejudices on display.

Yet Jesus intentionally challenges their prejudices and their priorities.

He lets them know by His example that people are more important than prejudice.

And O, how we need that lesson today!

Listen, go ahead and be a conservative, but just remember that liberals are people who need Jesus too.

Go ahead and be a republican, but just remember that democrats are people who need Jesus too.

Go ahead and be white or black or brown, you really don’t have a choice, but just remember that those who aren’t your own race are people who need Jesus too.

Go ahead and be an American and be proud of it, but never forget that Indians and Pakistanis and Hindus and South Africans and Indonesians and, yes, even Muslims are people who need Jesus too!

Listen, your prejudices, and you have them, are just prejudices and they must never get in the way of the gospel.

Jesus teaches His disciples that Samaritan women are worth loving and worth saving!

He challenges their prejudices and He changes their priorities.

He shows them that people are to be valued over prejudices.

But he challenges another of their priorities, and this may have even been harder for them to accept.

He shows them by his own example that obedience is more important than comfort.

Now I just have to believe that these disciples were typical men.