Sermon Tone Analysis

“Rescue the perishing, Care for the dying, Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave; Weep o’er the erring one, Lift up the fallen, Tell them of Jesus the Mighty to save.”

These are the first lines of a hymn which I shared with you the last time we met.

Rescue the perishing is the name of that hymn.

And as we talked about it we began to take a look at just what we are doing for the sake of Jesus.

We looked at what he called us to do and how we are commanded by the Great Commission to be witnesses to all the people in all the world.

We used Psalm 126:6 as a jumping point to define how we are to go and evangelize others.

We talked about sowing and reaping and the respective responses and rewards of doing such.

As I look back I think, we are to share the Gospel truth.

Let’s break that down.

Gospel.

Go spell---the truth.

That’s what we’ve got to do.

We have to go and spell the truth to people!

That’s evangelism.

Evangelism is the missing word in many churches today.

That statement has a twofold meaning.

So much so I’ll say it again.

Evangelism is the missing Word in many churches today.

Think about it.

I just said something clever.

Did you catch it?

First of all, many churches just aren’t talking about evangelism at all.

When they hear the word evangelism they cringe and think that’s what those crazy people do.

We should never talk about that.

Or they believe that evangelism is solely for the person who went to school for it, and is out in “the field” (we’ll talk about that later).

It’s someone else’s problem.

Second, Evangelism is the missing Word with a capital “W”.

Churches are just not following a Biblical approach to growth.

As a result all the seminars and campaigns these churches go through do not create a Great Commission growth.

They have gotten bogged down into routines and habits.

They have profiled the ministry of evangelism as something that someone else does outside of their local church.

As a result, how do churches grow?

They grow through the exchange of church members.

Churches today are quickly becoming an exchange of popularity.

People are looking for a church where they feel they can fit in.

A place where a church is everything they think a church should be.

The problem with all this shuffling is that somewhere is a church that is actually losing a member.

The problem with all this shuffling is that people don’t always look for the church that God wants them in.

It has become a matter of personal choice rather than a matter of God’s direction.

As a result people don’t stay long enough to do what God has gifted them to do.

As a result there is little or no evangelism working out of our local churches.

Let’s look at the Master, the Master soul-winner- Jesus.

Jesus won the hearts of hundreds of people while he walked this earth.

We can learn from the Master.

Now some of you may be thinking, “that’s Jesus-God incarnate.

I could never do all that he did.

I mean- he was God! Be realistic!”

You don’t have to be capable of doing everything that he did, but you are capable of spreading the truth, of sowing the seed, and bringing in a harvest of souls.

If we look at some of the ways Jesus witnessed, we can in turn use his example to affect change in someone else’s life and possibly in others as well.

Let’s consider the woman at the well.

We begin by looking in John 4 starting in verse one “Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples), He left Judea and departed again to Galilee.

But He needed to go through Samaria.

So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.

Now Jacob’s well was there.

Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well.

It was about the sixth hour.

A woman of Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.”

Here we see how Jesus overcomes physical conditions to win a soul.

We find Jesus somewhere in Judea having need to head to Galilee.

That’s about a 70 mile hike if you were to go through Samaria.

It’s twice as long if you were to follow the long detour most Jews would follow to go to Galilee, so great was the Jews prejudice of the Samaritans.

So Jesus takes a short-cut.

He goes to the place that no proper Jew of the time would want to go.

Jesus knows where there is a need to witness and that’s where he goes.

To win souls we must also be willing to go to that place of need.

We must be willing to go out of our way.

But most importantly we must go.

Notice, Jesus went to where the woman would be.

He did not wait at home for the woman to call on him.

That means that we need to be willing and ready to change our plans.

We might have to miss that TV show, or we might have to put down that book.

We might have need to let that call go to voicemail.

We might have need to stop texting.

We might have need to get up out of our comfy chairs.

We might have need to put away our toys and roll up our sleeves and get to work.

Can we do the things that make us available to answer that call when it comes?

Or will we be so busy with “stuff” that we won’t even perceive the need?

Next, lets notice that Jesus was weary and sat by the well.

After about 50 miles on a three day journey Jesus is physically exhausted.

I think I would be too after doing all that walking.

But notice, despite where he is, and what he has endured the past couple of days, Jesus is not too weary to witness to the woman.

He is not so tired that he doesn’t care.

Do we find ourselves asking a similar question?

Do we think that we work too hard, or are just too busy to take the time to speak to someone about Christ?

If we are, then are we putting the demands of this world over the demands of the Christ.

We are letting our jobs, our finances, our hobbies run our life, and not the call to witness.

Lets continue in verse 9-10, and verse 18. “Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?”

For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”…for

you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”

I have selected these verses to show you how Jesus is breaking down barriers to win a soul.

The woman was a Samaritan.

That’s a racial barrier.

The Jews did not associate with the Samaritans whatsoever.

They were considered “not pure” Jews because they were racially mixed.

The Samaritans hated the Jews because of that and their impeding the Samaritans from partaking in allowable worship.

So strict was this division, that a Jew wouldn’t even consider using a Samaritans cup.

Another barrier that Jesus broke down was the fact that this woman was an immoral woman.

She had gone through 5 husbands and was now living with a man whom she was not married to.