This, if you're keeping tabs, is lesson number 10. Line by line study, textual study, of the book of John: Jesus the God/Man. So we're going to go back and mine, if you wish, more information from John chapter four that describes Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well.
We've talked about that and gone through that passage, but we're going to look at it again, this time from another perspective. In our last lesson over this passage I pointed out how all three themes of John's book are brought out in this one passage. First of all, Jesus is tired and thirsty, He asks for a drink, He shows His human nature.
Secondly, He demonstrates His divine nature by revealing this woman's past, no way that He could have known this, they were strangers, He had never met her before. So by knowing intimately her past, He demonstrates His divine nature and then we observe as she goes from disbelief to belief and how the village she comes from goes from disbelief to belief and therein we see the three themes, the three, I said there are three threads that that run through the book of John and they intertwine throughout the narrative. Well, in our lesson today we're going to examine the passage again, but this time we're going to note the way that Jesus approaches the evangelizing of another person, in other words, Jesus' personal evangelism approach.
I think it's very interesting when we take a look at how the Lord did what we try to do. You know that Steve has a visitation program that he heads up and encouraging those who participate to get to know individuals one-on-one, share their faith, encourage the brethren, so it'll be interesting to see how Jesus does does this thing. Now everyone who has received the gift of salvation should have a desire to share it with someone else.
You have a dentist and the man or woman who's your dentist rips teeth out of your mouth, makes you bleed, right? Hurts you with needles, puts stuff in your mouth and then talks to you, expects you to talk back, and then after he's finished doing all of this torture to you, you see your friend and they're wanting to get a little varnish done on their tooth and you're saying, 'Oh, you got to go see my dentist,' you're ready to evangelize for this person who has put you through pain. My point is imagine what we ought to be anxious to do for the person who gives us eternal life.
How we should be anxious to say, 'Hey, boy, I got somebody that I want you to meet. I want you to meet my Savior. I want you to meet my Lord.
' So that's personal evangelism, the process of sharing the gospel and bringing others to Christ. Now what I'm talking about here is not personal evangelism, like what I'm doing right now, this morning, this is not personal evangelism; it's preaching, it's teaching in the assembly, it's necessary as brother George was saying in his prayer, it's an important part of our Christian growth, but it's not evangelism. If I write a blog post and Hal and I record that and put that on our website and that's available to thousands of people, now that's evangelism; that's our way, or well, it's one way of evangelizing, getting the good news out, but when I sit down with one single person face to face and I share my faith and I teach the gospel, that's personal evangelism; and we talked about evangelist a lot, nothing beats the one-on-one.
I mean as much of a promoter as I am of mass evangelism and mass media, I think it's very effective, I think it's an important part of the church's outreach program, nothing beats sitting down with another person and a Bible between the two of you and having a conversation, a discussion about faith and salvation. Now in the Bible I've explained to you that we find through commands and examples and inferences the pattern on how to do certain things. If you want to know how do we do communion and when do we do it, well you go through the New Testament and you examine the passages that explain when the saints were taking the Lord's Supper and you can discover their the when and the how and the who, you have a pattern that guides you in how to do certain things in the Bible.
My point is in the same way in John chapter 4 verses 1 to 42, we see a pattern or a method that Jesus used in the work of personal evangelism. So if somebody said, 'I'd like to know how to really do personal evangelism, that one-on-one evangelism work, where could I go in the Bible to get information about that? ' I would say, 'Well, go to John chapter 4 and examine Jesus' one-on-one interaction with the woman at the well and you will find the perfect method of personal evangelism.
' Well, Jesus', what do we call it? What type is it? Well, He used the multiplication method and I want to try to explain how this multiplication method of personal evangelism works.
First of all, a few rules about mathematics. We know that multiplication is a faster way of increase than simple addition, we know that. A great example of this was demonstrated on television a while back.
Here's what the person explained: If you took a simple checkerboard or chessboard and you placed a single sugar cube on each square, one sugar cube on each square of that checkerboard, you'd end up with 64 sugar cubes. That's addition; one plus one plus one plus one plus one, next row, one plus one, but well you know when you. .
. if you put a sugar cube on each square you too have 64 sugar cubes. If on the other hand you simply multiplied by two the number of sugar cubes that you put on each square, for example, you put one sugar cube on square number one then you double that for square number two and then you doubled it again for square three and you continue to double it until you reach square 64, according to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, if you multiply the sugar cubes in this way, you would have enough sugar to cover the state of Texas; that's the power of multiplication.
Now pretend that those sugar cubes are people who are becoming Christians. If each Christian simply adds one Christian as a result of their conversion; so I'm converted and then somewhere along the line I convert my spouse or my dad or my brother, well the growth, that's addition; I add one, and traditionally that's been the way that the church has grown, slow, small steady. We add one and that one adds one and then we add another one and that one adds one, maybe two.
If on the other hand each Christian continually doubles himself and teaches others to double themselves then the process of multiplication begins. Now our concept of evangelism is that we turn over to the ministers the responsibility of putting one sugar cube on every square. A lot of times if you were to ask people, 'Well, who's job is it to evangelize?
' A lot of people said, 'Well, that's the preachers jobs, that's what we pay them for,' which is not correct, not biblical. We think the preachers job is to put one cube on every square, one person in every pew, one individual, and then increase that. The situation that I, well I won't say appreciate, but I have certainly experienced a lot, is someone will come to me and say, 'I finally got my brother to come to church,' and they bring their brother over and they introduce their brother to me or to Marty, one of the preachers, 'Hey, how are you John?
Nice to meet you. I'm glad you could come,' and then that individual thinks, 'I've evangelized my brother. I've introduced him to the preacher.
OK, go get him. Go get him,' and of course, that's not the way it works, and it's not even the way it works emotionally, because don't you think the brother knows what's going on here? It's like a blind date, you know what I'm saying?
Well, Jesus did not use the addition model as we will see with the woman at the well. He demonstrates how to first make and then multiply disciples. Now before multiplying one must first make a disciple and so the passage in John reveals to us the process that Jesus used to accomplish the first and the basic step of personal evangelism and that is to convert at least one soul.
You've got to know how to do one before you can multiply. So in this passage we're able to identify seven steps in the making of a disciple by Jesus. A disciple is a follower, a learner one who is committed to following, learning, and obeying Christ and only Christ.
OK, ready? Seven steps to make a disciple. Now you all know the story of the woman at the well, so I'm not going to read the passage over again, we did that last time.
Step number one, contact. The point of contact is anywhere where two people enter a conversation, an acquaintance, any situation where two people connect in some way: sports, work, service, family, friends, connecting with people. Notice that Jesus made contact by asking her for a drink of water, pretty simple.
Note also that He didn't allow social, religious, or sexist barriers to stop Him from making contact with this woman. She was surprised at first. She said, 'You're a Jew, I'm a Samaritan.
You're a man, I'm a woman. What is this? You're making contact with me?
' Jesus' kind of pushed aside all those barriers and then He made contact. Now the rule about contact is that if the gospel is for all then there should be no barrier we're not willing to cross in order to make contact. I got a good lesson in this and the lesson was given to me, I didn't give the lesson, I got the lesson.
As you know we moved recently and we were fixing up the house that we've moved into and I'm out mowing, picking up stuff, and try to get thing organized and there's a fellow by my back fence, there's a fellow mowing his lawn, he's on his riding mower, it's on and he kind of comes close to the fence and he waves and so I walk over and he shuts off his mower and he comes and his name is Wendell, African-American gentleman and we're shaking hands. 'How are you? I'm the new neighbor,' I tell him, 'We're folks, our kids are grown, no dogs, no pets, no horses, no loud music, no motorcycles.
' And he goes, 'Good, good, it's a quiet neighborhood. ' We just chitchat, just a little chitchat and I said to him, 'Well, if I if I can be of service to you in any way,' I said, 'please don't hesitate to ask,' and he said, 'Well, same here, I just live right over here, OK? ' And then he said, 'Oh and I go to the Faith Community Christian church,' just like that, just like that, part of his introduction, 'I go to this church' and I said, 'Great,' I said I go to the Choctaw church of Christ,' oh wonderful, but he beat me to it.
Part of his introduction was, 'I am a Christian, I go to church,' and in his mind that was setting up the next question, 'Do you go to church, because you're always welcome to come with. . .
' I saw it coming. 'Good for him,' I said, 'good for him. He beat the preacher to the punch,' but the point I'm trying to get across, he just didn't make contact, he made contact and in that first contact identified himself, 'I'm a Christian, I go to this church,' and that introduction would set up the next step which would have come had I not said, 'Oh, I go to church over here.
' Of course, the good thing is now we know we're both believers, we can have a conversation about that next time. So contact, first step in evangelism. Next one is challenge.
Challenge, it's the most difficult step, the one where we usually fail. Challenge is when you step out from the normal course of polite conversation in order to open up a dialogue concerning spiritual rather than temporal things and that's what my neighbor did, he challenged me by stepping out there and saying, 'Look I'm a church person. I'm a Christian.
' It's when the conversation turns to serious matters, important matters, that challenge the non-believer to explore the true meaning of life, the spiritual aspect of life. Your neighbor's mother has just passed away and they're sharing that and challenge is not just saying, 'Well, that's a terrible thing. And I remember when my mom died, and oh, yeah, I was sad too,' but challenge is, 'Can I come over and pray with you?
Would you permit me to show you some passages in the Bible that I found very comforting when my mother died? ' Challenging the person to take a step in the direction of spiritual things, obviously, it's difficult to do at first, but with time these probes can be launched gently without pride, you're not trying to win an argument here; perhaps a question about the Bible or religious background or church attendance somewhere along the line the time and opportunity presents itself for this and we need to recognize the moment and challenge our non-christian friends or family to enter into a spiritually oriented discussion. They're talking about gays in the Boy Scouts at school, around the lunch table, you're a teacher, and the challenge comes when you say, 'Well, the Bible has not changed on this subject.
' You make your position known, again no pride, you're not looking for a fistfight, you're just saying; you're staking out the position of the scriptures and you're inviting people to look at the scriptures. After having discussed the water that He asked for, Jesus seized the opportunity to talk to her about living water. There's nothing to say we couldn't ask someone the same question at some point.
In Montreal this summer a group from Edmond went to do some mission work there with the church in Montreal, in Villa Mar, and the project that they do, Paul (our son) was telling us what they did with the group, they're mostly college students, they went near the subway stations where there's a lot of. . .
near the universities, there are many universities in downtown Montreal (those of you who've come know what I'm talking about) and they stood near the metros and they gave out water bottles but on the water bottles they had printed, 'Thirsty? ' and then a website and when they went to the website, the website took them to the Bible passage about Jesus being the living water. So there was a challenge.
Step number three, conformation. Once the challenge is made, the discussion entered into, it's up to the disciple to prove or confirm that he or she knows what they're talking about. Now it could be a demonstration of Christian kindness, a proof of Bible knowledge, an example of good and pure Christian lifestyle.
My neighbor, for example, we talked about church and can I be of service to you, but let's say the next storm comes and knocks with a lot of trees back there knocks a tree and falls on his house. The confirmation would be that Lise and I would be knocking on his door and saying, 'Is there something we can do? Would you like to come to our house to dry out?
Can we bring a meal? ', a confirmation of what you're talking about, that you are a genuine Christian, because once the disciple has engaged another in this spiritual dialogue they need to be able to demonstrate the proof of what they're talking about in themselves. Are you really a Christian?
You've talked the game, you brought me into the conversation, but let's have a Bible study. Yeah, OK, I'm having that Bible study and they go to your house and you say, 'Well, let me move the ashtray out of the way so we can put our Bibles down here. ' Whoops.
'Let me get these empty beer bottles out of there. ' This is the second area where personal evangelism often fails; the unbeliever rejects the message because the messenger does not embody the message, it's just talk, no action. In the church one of my big disappointments is, and I'll give you an example of it, one Sunday there was a visitor that came and I met them in the foyer and we talked and he was looking for someone who had invited him on that particular Sunday to come to services and you know what I'm going to say, right?
That individual, that member of the church, was not at Bible study that Sunday and arrived late for worship. You think that visitor came back? Because that visitor said, 'Well, if it's not that important to you, why should it be to me?
' In His dealing with the woman Jesus resists being offended by her initial rebuff. I mean she blew Him off. 'You want water?
Who are You? Jews don't talk to Samaritans. ' She blows Him off, but He refused to be offended and He goes on to demonstrate His wisdom and His knowledge of her life, of her needs, and her question.
In other words, He proved who He was. Step number four, the call. Usually after a personal study, usually after a discussion, a sermon there's a call; a call to decide to accept this true what has been shared.
Do you really believe what I just said? In the case of personal evangelism, the call is to follow Jesus. Even at the preliminary stage the call is to follow the Lord, even if it's from a far-off position of curiosity and maybe finding out more.
When we're talking about having studies with people I remind them that at the end of the study make sure you make an appointment's a strong word, but an agreement, 'Shall we study again? Would you like to do this again? OK, there if you have other questions?
Why let's see on the 15th, I'm free, we could go have coffee. ' In other words, the call, you're calling them to keep coming, keep coming close to you. No one was ever saved without making a series of decisions.
You think back over your life, you had to decide to listen to what the person that said to you. You had to decide to go to that church. You had to decide to go to that Bible study; had to decide to go back to that Bible study.
You had you make a whole series of decisions that ultimately lead you to salvation; maybe a little different if you were baptized as a young child, but even then, you had to make decisions, but certainly if you became a Christian as an adult, as I did, I can think back of the decisions that I made that ultimately led me to Christ and any one of those decisions could have gone another way. If you have not made a conscious decision to become a disciple of Jesus then you're not a disciple. People become disciples of Christ by decision.
So Jesus tells the woman. 'I am the Messiah. ' He called on her to believe this, but He couldn't force her, it was her decision to believe it or not to believe it.
All He could do was call on her to believe. Now we do this when we invite someone to church or we ask for the Bible study or we encourage them to hear the gospel, every one of these is a call to follow Jesus, every one is a call to follow Jesus. Sometimes we call on people to be baptized a little too soon.
Sometimes as I just said, sometimes the call is 'Would you like to have another study? ' or 'Do you have a question? ' Number five, got to move here, conversion.
At some point the entire good news is conveyed, sufficient proof is provided through study and you've given a good Christian example. The amount of time differs from person to person, but eventually everybody's got to decide to follow or not to follow, eventually we bring them to the point of expressing their faith in obedience to Jesus' commands and that repentance and baptism, but sometimes we fail because we go to extremes. First of all, the first extreme is we never ask or encourage the person to make up their minds or to make a commitment.
We think that they're just going to tell us when they feel like it and it doesn't work like that. I remember working as a young guy, I'm eighteen maybe years old and I worked for a clothing company selling suits and ties and things like that at the retail level, a Golden Sun. Wow, they don't exist anymore, but anyways and Mr Gold, there was a generation, there was a Gold Sr and Gold II and Gold III, and they were all in the business, but Mr Gold, the old one, the older gentleman, on Saturday mornings would have a pep talk with all the salesmen there and he had very blue language; today it wouldn't work in the workplace, but many, many, many years ago you could swear and curse at your employees and use that as motivation, believe it or not, but the thing I remember about Mr Gold (aside from his language) was that he always said, 'You'll never sell anything if you don't ask.
' 'You've got to ask,' he said, 'The guy bought a suit, show him a shirt, put a tie on top of the shirt, don't just do that ask, "Shall I wrap these up for you? Do you want to take all three ties, or would you like me to show you some more? " Ask, it always stuck with me.
It's the same thing in personal evangelism, you have to ask, 'Are you ready now to make that decision? Do you believe the things that we've. .
. ? Is there more I can information I can give you now?
' You have to ask. Even Paul the apostle, it struck me when he was brought to this point; he was only moved when Ananias pushed him. We know that passage in Acts 22:16, Ananias says to him, "And now why do you delay?
" Ananias wouldn't have said that if Paul or Saul wasn't delaying. He was sitting there. He was stunned.
He had received his sight, he had heard the gospel, and he was still sitting there mulling over what this was and then Ananias had to ask him, 'What are you waiting for? Come on, arise, be baptized, wash away your sins. Why wait?
' Even Saul had to be asked. So imagine if a person like Saul had to be asked, we're perhaps less knowledgeable than he was and yet he still had to be asked. And then the other way that we fail at conversion is we fail by asking too soon.
We've only shared the basics, we haven't developed the relationship. We haven't provided sufficient evidence. I'll tell you what, a lot of times there's a question that blocks people and until you get to that question nothing has happened.
You think you've answered all their questions, but the question is different from various individuals. I know one individual who put off baptism for years and years, used to come to church with his wife years and years and every preacher that worked for this church, this was in Ottawa, every preacher that worked for this church tried to baptize this guy and they explained baptism from the Greek, from the history, from the context, they approach it every which way, and he was finally baptized and I saw him (it wasn't me that baptized), but I saw him a couple of months after he was baptized, and he says, 'Hey, guess what? I was baptized.
' 'Really? ,' I said, 'Well, good for you. Praise God.
He is so kind,' and all that, and he says, 'You know I realized I could do it, I didn't have to do it in front of everybody. ' There was nothing theological. It wasn't a theological argument that he had.
He was shy. He was shy. So until you answer the objection, until you find what's blocking the pathway here, and sometimes that takes time.
For many people faith grows at a slower pace than understanding. Just because you understand it up here intellectually doesn't mean you understand it in here emotionally, and the thing that makes a person make up their mind and make a decision is not this, it's this, the heart, and not everybody's heart moves at the same pace as the mind. I mean democracy, for example, in the in Middle Eastern countries they understand the concept, but not everybody is convinced that it'd be good for them.
So we rush to convert someone and when people balk or they stall, we turn away from them instead of continuing to provide contact and challenge and proof and calling and encouragement to convert. Be nice to say to someone, well, I'll use my neighbor again, 'I will strive to be a good Christian neighbor to you whether you agree with me or not, whether you accept to come to services with me or not, whether you accept to have a Bible study with me or not. I will be that person.
I will continue to be that person whether you respond or not. ' In the story of the woman we see her believing the proof that Jesus gave her. She confesses that faith by acknowledging her hope.
Remember, she acknowledged her hope for a Jewish Messiah, not the Messiah she had been taught about in the north as a Samaritan, but she confessed her faith in the Messiah of Jerusalem, of the South. Today she would confess Jesus' name, repent of her sins, and be baptized to demonstrate her faith, but she demonstrated her faith by acknowledging that the Messiah comes from the south, from Jerusalem, that was the truth. Number six, consecration.
This step is where the convert actually is trained for discipleship, the one who was formerly a non-believer now becomes a believer and a follower; the convert or new disciple begins to act and sound, well, like what? Like a disciple. For example, he begins to have a prayer life, he begins to read and study the word for himself, he identifies and assembles with other disciples, he finds ways to serve the Lord with his own skills.
He starts himself being a disciple. Now the burden for this consecration of disciples rests with the leaders of the church, it's their job; the ministers, the elders, the deacons, it's their job to make sure that there is a conscious effort by the congregation to integrate and equip this individual for discipleship, for fulfillment. A lot of people are not fulfilled as Christians because we, those who are older in the Lord, have not taught them how to be fruitful disciples.
The woman after her contact with Jesus is immediately energized to share her brief but powerful encounter with Jesus among her family and her community. Not everyone's consecration to service is as fast as this woman's, but then again not everyone was converted directly by Jesus Himself. And what's really spectacular about her consecration is she was an outcast.
She was getting water at noon because she had been married five times and now was living with somebody else. She was a total outcast and yet she goes into the village and she she confronts the leaders of the village on top of that with her faith, pretty powerful stuff. And then the number seven, the multiplication part.
In the addition model the woman would have gone home, maybe shared her experience with her partner so that he might know the Lord and become a disciple with her, another sugar cube on another square, but this woman begins the multiplication model by sharing her experience with everybody in town. Now we don't see all the details, but in verse 28 she goes to the men of the city, the ones she's already had contact with, and she challenges them to consider what has happened to her. So we then read that they believe because of her word and then they bring others who believe because of Jesus' word.
Now John doesn't spell that out, but at the end of the chapter the number of those who were converted and bringing others to him was multiplied in much the same manner. So one woman multiplies to several men who multiply into a great number, all in the space of a few days. There's the power of multiplication in personal evangelism.
OK, we have five minutes left. Let me just kind of summarize. If we use this model in our personal evangelism approach, we could plant churches everywhere that we're needed; in the state, in the country, in the nation, we could do it in this generation and the question is why aren't we doing this?
What's stopping us? Two main reasons. First of all, we don't use the approach.
Most churches, including our own, use the addition approach, not the multiplication approach, and usually it's because we don't know it. And then secondly, when churches do try to use the multiplication approach they only use parts of it or it breaks down due to human weakness. So either we don't ever go from contact to challenge leaving most of our communication with others at the kind of non-spiritual.
We think personal evangelism is just making friends and we got lots of friends, but we're not challenging those friends spiritually or we give up too quickly if the person doesn't respond to the challenge or to the call; or we drop people who don't convert the first time we present the gospel to them; or we try to qualify our contacts by guessing which ones are sympathetic to the gospel. That's the worst part. 'Nah, I'm not going to tell that person they're not interested in the gospel.
Oh my goodness, nah, they would never be interested in the gospel, no use. ' Mr Gold, he taught me that lesson. You never know who's going to buy what.
I remember we used to have turns, we'd go to the door to greet a client a customer and we're several salesmen on the floor and so you took turns going to the door because you couldn't cut in, if you went to the door, greeted a customer, and they came in, that you had your turn. The next salesman had to go up for the next person to come in. So on Saturday morning they changed that rule, on Saturday morning anybody who was available could go to the door.
So one day a guy came in on a Saturday morning, really early, scruffy looking, jeans, four day beard going, nobody wanted that. Everybody's looking at each other thinking, 'This guy wants some free stuff or something,' or 'He's lost. ' So I said, and I was the youngest, Mazzalongo you go.
So I went to the door and the guy said to me, 'I'm a lumberjack, I work up in the northern timber. I'm getting married in a week. I need a complete new wardrobe: shoes, suits, shirts, pajamas, the whole.
. . ' I spent the entire morning selling this guy.
I didn't even have to sell it and the other salesmen were just sitting there like this. What did they do? They tried to qualify this guy and they said, 'This guy's a bum.
He's not going to buy anything. ' And of course, at the time I was thinking the same thing, but I was the youngest so I had to go and that taught me the lesson: never ever to judge ahead of time who's interested and who's not. In the multiplying method of personal evangelism, everybody's a potential contact.
In the multiplying method we're always looking for the opportunity to challenge our contacts and in the multiplying method we are ready and able to provide proof of our own faith and eager to repeatedly call on our contacts to follow Jesus. In the multiplying of disciples we're not afraid to go for closure and asking our contacts to be converted and to obey the gospel. Go for it!
In multiplying ministry the church is equipped to train and build up new converts,multiply their potential for greater multiplication. The risk with all of this, of course, is that when the power of multiplying disciple takes hold, believe it or not, it's like riding a tidal wave. It's like riding a tidal wave.
Can you imagine if a hundred people were converted here in a month? I mean our existing systems would be pushed to the max. The lady who takes the pictures of new members would be working overtime and the office would be working overtime, the elders would be working overtime because they've got a hundred new people they need to visit and so on and so forth.
It's like riding a tidal wave. We are then once again like the Jerusalem church doing incredible things, making incredible sacrifices, truly leaving the world behind to manage the harvest that God can and will give. In the meantime, we stick to the addition model because we can control it, it's in our comfort zone, and we like being in our comfort zone.
So let's remember the seven steps in personal evangelism. The only thing I want to say with this slide right here is that you do them one at a time. A lot of times I'll do this lesson and people say, 'Alright, I'm going to do all seven.
' No, one at a time. Practice making contact. Practice making contact as a Christian and then add to that another step, practice making a challenge and so on and so forth.
It's something that you learn how to do and and it comes with practice and experience. OK, so that's Jesus' multiplication system for personal evangelism. Thank you for your time.
I think our class is over for this morning.
