This Is Disciple Making
At It’s Best!
1. Good Morning! Let’s pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
2. Opening Comments: This is the Third Sunday of Lent. As we know Lent is the season when the spiritual disciplines of Prayer, Fasting and Charity are to be especially exercised. It’s a penitential time when we’re being cleansed and renewed. It can therefore become a transformational time.
1. It’s my belief that our Lord is not only preparing us for the ever present wonders of Holy Week but He’s also using this time to prepare some of us to become active disciplers!
Now I know some of us are a bit scared – and rightly so. It takes real courage to actually do what we’re supposed to do and that is to draw people into the Kingdom of God and then actually walk with them as God’s renews their hearts and minds to become more and more like His Son.
This whole move towards becoming an active, vital Discipling church is a scary thing!
It’s scary to wonder how our groups are going to form and grow. It’s so much easier to do nothing – well we could always do what churches have been doing for the last few generations and that’s to enroll in endless Bible studies and Book studies. But this is not what God wants for us and this, I’m convinced, is a big part of what this Lenten Season is really all about – God is using it to prepare us for becoming a more active and vital Church which He will use to bring His Kingdom to earth in Rochester!
Today’s Scripture readings really zero in on what we’re being raised up to become.
Our focus will fall upon Christ’s conversation with the Samaritan women at the well. As we reflect upon how He wooed her into His Kingdom we will learn from Him.
So our prayer is this: “What Lord do you want to reveal to us that will help us better to draw the lost into Your Kingdom?”
3. Focusing in. Remember that as we began our Lenten pilgrimage 3 weeks ago we began with the thought that God is calling us – each one of us – out into the desert to rediscover our hunger and thirst for Him and Him alone. So how thirsty are you right now?
Hmmm. . . . That’s not half as thirsty as the unbeliever you sit beside at work. That’s not even close to the hunger and thirst that they feel in the still of the night when their prodigal obsessiveness isn’t able to dull their pain.
Do you and I even begin to understand what not knowing our Lord is like any more?
We see the movie stars dancing through life but what we don’t see is their silent despair at the utter meaninglessness of life outside their make-believe world! What we may only hear whispers of is their dark inner emptiness.
The lost are not joy-filled – but rather they’re fear –filled! Why? Because they’re clinging to cobwebs as lifelines!
And we have the answer for them – now all we need is the empowerment and the training to bring the answer to this hurting world! That’s what G12 is all about!!!!
Our first reading is from Exodus 17:3-7 and it describes the episode where the Israelites grumbled that they had been brought out into the wilderness only to die of thirst. In response, Moses, following the Lord’s instruction, provides them with the water to drink from a rock! Here we see divine provision of life-giving water!
The link between this and the Gospel reading where Jesus offers the Samaritan woman water that “will become in her a spring of water welling up to eternal life,” – the water of life, is in both cases the divine provision of life-giving water.
In this encounter Jesus breaks through a strong ethnic taboo and actually reaches out to a member of a tribe which is profoundly disdained by the Jewish population of that day – the Samaritans were seen as half-breeds – a polluted nation!
In this way Jesus overcomes age-old hostility and division and shows in his reconciling behavior the first signs of the Messianic Age – O, by the way, could the C.E.C. in it’s efforts to unity the Church around Christ’s table be a sign of the coming Messianic Age??? I wonder????
Now before we look at the Gospel reading in more detail let’s touch briefly on our Psalm and Epistle readings.
In Psalm 95 we hear the Psalmist challenging us to come to the Rock of our Salvation and as we stand before Him not to harden our hearts. It is out of this Rock that living waters will flow but to receive this life-giving water we must not harden our hearts.
Do you have a hard heart? If you do you can’t receive from God! You can’t even hear Him! You have cut yourself off from Him and His life giving water!
If you have hardened your heart you can’t possibly expect to become a fount of water from which others can drink. This is what we must all become before we can begin to disciple others. A great discipler is like unto a deep well from which others come to drink. If you have hardened your heart you can’t possibly be connected with the One who can transform you into a great Discipler.
Oh how we’ve forgotten how wonderful it is to be “at peace with God!’ That’s our great gift!
Let’s ponder this for a moment – God created us – we’re made in His image. We’re made to worship Him. But because of the Fall we have become separated from God and so we’re alone! In a very real sense – we’re homeless! That sense of aloneness is felt at the core of all human beings who are out of communion with God!
It’s to this sense of homelessness and aloneness that we must speak into.
Oh, my brothers and sisters the lost need to hear the Good News that they can be reconciled with their God by Jesus Christ!
4. Focusing in on the Gospel reading: OK now let’s focus in on the Gospel reading and learn how Jesus reached out to the lost. What can we learn from Him?
Let’s read now: John chapter 4 beginning at verse 5:
John 4:5 So Jesus came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
John 4:7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
Now let me stop for a moment and give us all so background.
The well of Jacob lies at the foot of Mount Gerizim, the center of Samaritan worship. It is one of the historic sites in Palestine that we’re reasonably certain of. The “sixth hour” would probably have been about noon, reckoning from daybreak. It was an unusual time for women to come to a village well for water. Perhaps the Samaritan woman had a sudden need, or perhaps she did not care to meet the other women of the community. In consideration of her general character, the other women may have shunned her.
Let me give us some background also on the Samaritans:
The Samaritans were considered half-breeds by Judean standards. They were presumably descended from Israelites who had remained behind when the Assyrians deported the leading families of the region following their conquest in 722 B.C.E.
The Israelites remaining behind intermarried with foreign settlers brought in by the Assyrians in the years that followed, although the Samaritans—the new ethnic group—continued to regard the Torah as their law. They erected their own temple on Mount Gerizim, just outside Shechem (modern Nablus), at a time when there was no temple in Jerusalem.
So Samaritans were despised by the Israelites. Let’s read on now:
John 4:9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You’re a Jew and I’m a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews don’t associate with Samaritans.)
Ah! Here we see Jesus associating with the underclass of society – Does this tell us anything? Yes, we’re going to have to be willing to reach out to those whom we might not normally reach out to. Reading on – verse 10:
John 4:10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” What’s Jesus saying here? When people turn us down – when they say “No!” to our invitations to come to Church or to our Discipleship Group or whatever – we can think and perhaps gently say – “You don’t know what you’re missing!” Let’s read on verse 11:
John 4:11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?” This is a rational response – she is captive to the material – what you can see – world. But Jesus is “teasing” her to apprehend the “real” but invisible world. A world that holds the water of life for her!
Will He be able to stir up her thirst for this invisible but very very real life-giving water? Let’s see – reading on verse 13:
John 4:13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Do you think He’s got her attention yet? He speaks as one who know what He’s talking about. Could you make this statement and be believable? Do you believe that there is this kind of water and it’s there for the asking from Jesus Christ? Do you really believe that Jesus can change someone? Do you really believe that Jesus can reach through the earthly veil and touch someone’s heart and draw them to Him if only we will reach out for Him?
Let’s read on – what is the woman going to do? Verse 15:
John 4:15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” She’s still thinking H2O isn’t she? How is Jesus going to get her to think beyond what can be seen only? Let’s read on – verse 16:
John 4:16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
John 4:17 “I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
John 4:19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Ah! Did you see how He did it? He brought something to light that He could only have known if He had the ability to see into that invisible world! Ah! In this one act He opened the veil for the Samaritan woman.
Now what are we talking about here? Ah! It’s why we’ll never forsake our Charismatic roots – it’s that gift that we have to commune with the Holy Spirit and receive gifts – supernatural gifts – from Him to the end that His Kingdom is built up. What more perfect opportunity existed than this one. And so the Holy Spirit told Jesus something that would open this woman up to the Good News! He told her the simple truth that had separated her from others – her indiscriminate sex life. Something embarrassing yet something that He could not naturally know as a stranger.
Clearly He was somebody special – BUT He was not only telling her embarrassing things about her own life, He was also offering her something – something which now she began to believe in – Ah! Her eyes of faith are beginning to open. This is what we’re being called to do! Can you see it? Let’s find out what she did next? Verse 21:
John 4:21 Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time 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, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
Ah! Jesus is now going deeper as she is now able to hear Him. What He’s telling her is that there is a deeper reality beyond the physical senses – and to bring this home He makes the point that there will so no longer be any need for a physical temple in which to worship – but rather people soon will be able - verse 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
The Samaritan woman is now truly “hearing Jesus” – not only with her ears but with her heart! She’s ready to hear it all – the Good News!
Listen to her response:
John 4:25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
John 4:26 Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”
John 4:27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
John 4:28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
Now jump forward to verse 39:
John 4:39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.
John 4:42 They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
Ok – can you see what happened here? Jesus has opened the spiritual eyes of this woman by telling her things He couldn’t possibly know “in the natural.” And once her spiritual eyes were beginning to open He told her about Himself and the rest is history!
The woman lays aside her water jar – a sure sign that she has now abandoned her quest for ordinary water. She’s now grasping something of the true gift that Jesus has to give her of which the gift of ordinary water was simply a symbol.
She now becomes a missionary to her own people and as a result of her testimony Jesus reaps a “harvest” among the Samaritans, who come to acknowledge Him as “Savior of the world!”
5. Application: So what is God saying to each of us this morning? I think He’s saying – “Relax – stop and sit and let me bring the Samaritans to you – the lost, the disdained. Let me bring the Zachaeus’ to you – the empty ones – and then let me give you supernatural insight into their lives so that you can then tell them about Me! Relax – this process of reaching out to the lost isn’t your idea it’s mine and I will give you all that you will need including supernatural knowledge! All you need to do is begin the conversation and I’ll do the rest – perhaps you’ll become a believer just like the Samaritan Woman! O Lord may that be so!
Let’s Pray . . .