Discipleship through Relationship
Notes
Transcript
Discipleship through Relationship
Discipleship through Relationship
Introduction
One of the things that Jesus did often was pray.
We as a church ought to model our prayer life after that of Jesus.
But what’s interesting, if you read through the accounts of Jesus’ life, we actually don’t get a LOT of the details surrounding Jesus’ prayer life.
We get mentioned to us a handful of prayers that Jesus prayed, most of them are rather short. Just a couple of verses.
We get, probably the most famous prayer, the one Jesus told his disciples to model their prayer life after in Matthew 6 where Jesus says
So pray this way: Our Father in heaven, may your name be honored,
may your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts, as we ourselves have forgiven our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
We get a very passionate but brief prayer while Jesus is on the cross, and he prays
Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.
And there’s a quite a few of these prayers recorded by Matthew Mark, Luke and John that are just 2 or 3 verses long.
But A lot of times Jesus went off to desolate places to spend his serious time in prayer.
We don’t have any of those prayers recorded in the Gospels. I find that interesting. Because we have plenty of times in the gospel where Jesus is alone, and nobody is around to witness what’s going on… The passage we’re going to read here in John 4 is an example, and yet the disciples knew about it to write it down.
So presumably after everything had been said and done, Jesus told his disciples what had happened while they were away, which is how they knew to write it down.
But when Jesus goes by himself to be in prayer, Serious, long, deep prayer, we don’t have any of those.
So obviously Jesus took his time withthe father very seriously. He set it apart, he scheduled it in, so that even his close disciples didn’t cut in on his deep prayer time.
But there is one long prayer that we do get. At the end of Jesus’ ministry after He and the disciples had eaten the last supper, after Jesus had washed their feet, Jesus goes against his normal routine and begins to pray a long passionate prayer right in front of the disciples.
It seems like this one he wanted them to be aware of exactly what it was that he prayed.
And right in the middle of that prayer, Jesus says this:
John 17:17-21
John 17:17-21
Set them apart in the truth; your word is truth.
Just as you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.
And I set myself apart on their behalf, so that they too may be truly set apart.
“I am not praying only on their behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony,
that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me.
There’s a couple of things I want you to notice about this prayer here, Jesus specifcially prays that his believers would be “sanctified by the truth”
He prays that they would be one, Just as Jesus and the father are one.
And he says the purpose for all of this prayer...is so that the world might believe.
this is Jesus’ prayer to the father that all of those who believed in him would be unified, that they would be set apart by the truth of scipture
For the express purpose of proclaming to the world the good news of the kingdom.
And after Jesus had been crucified, after he had risen and appeared to the disciplesl in the book of matthew he takes that prayer, that prayer to let the entire world know that he is the messiah, and he turns it into a command.
He says
Then Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
And then, in the book of acts, he takes that prayer and that command and he turns it into a promise.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the farthest parts of the earth.”
If you are a Christian, you are commanded to be a disciple who makes more disciples to the ends of the earth.
And this mornign we’re going to look at an example that Jesus gives us of the type of discipleship that fulfills his command for us. , and what it looks like to fulfill Jesus’ prayer that we might let the world know that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God.
Transition
If you have your Bibles I’d invite you to turn with me to John 4.
We’re in our Sevens series this morning.
And we’re currently looking at 7 different conversations in the Book of John, each of them are going to show a response to the fact that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God.
Roadmap
Big idea
The example we’re going to look at this morning, Jesus shows us here in John 4 is that we are called to Discipleship through relationship.
and that looks like
Stepping outside of our comfort zone
Setting aside debatable matters and focusing on what’s important
Planting the seeds of the Gospel, even when we might not see the results right
Point
Statement
Stepping outside of our comfort zone.
Explanation
But he had to pass through Samaria.
I want you to take that phrase “he had to go through samaria” and I want you to hold on to it in the back of your mind..Because we’re going to come back to that.
John 4:5-18
John 4:5-18
Now he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
Jacob’s well was there, so Jesus, since he was tired from the journey, sat right down beside the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me some water to drink.”
(For his disciples had gone off into the town to buy supplies.)
So the Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you—a Jew—ask me, a Samaritan woman, for water to drink?” (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “If you had known the gift of God and who it is who said to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
“Sir,” the woman said to him, “you have no bucket and the well is deep; where then do you get this living water?
Surely you’re not greater than our ancestor Jacob, are you? For he gave us this well and drank from it himself, along with his sons and his livestock.”
Jesus replied, “Everyone who drinks some of this water will be thirsty again.
But whoever drinks some of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again, but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
He said to her, “Go call your husband and come back here.”
The woman replied, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “Right you are when you said, ‘I have no husband,’
for you have had five husbands, and the man you are living with now is not your husband. This you said truthfully!”
We’ve mentioned a couple of times during this sermon series, because we’ve touched briefly on this encounter with the woman at the well...how the Jews and samaritans were religious rivals.
It was bad. They fought wars, people were assasinated.
At one point the Jews had gone and burned the samaritan temple the ground..
At another point the samaritans had snuck into jerusalem during the passover and had brought dead bodies to the temple, so that the jewish temple would be defiled during the biggest festival of the year..
This was a rivalry that made the hatfields and mccoys looks like child’s play.
and as Jesus sits down at this well, there’s this tension between this rivalry that comes up.
and Jesus asks this woman can I have a drink.
And the samaritan woman rightly points out, Jews don’t associate with Samaritans.
in the text, it literally says that they “don’t share things in common” with samaritans.
Because the common belief among the Jews during that time was that if you even so much as ate off of the same plate as a samaritan...
If you drank from the same well as a samaritan, if you sat at the same table as a samaritan, you would be considered unclean.
AND if we’re being honest, the hostility went both ways.
there’s another account in the book of Luke, where Jesus and his disciples are traveling down through samaria to Jerusalem, and it says
Now when the days drew near for him to be taken up, Jesus set out resolutely to go to Jerusalem.
He sent messengers on ahead of him. As they went along, they entered a Samaritan village to make things ready in advance for him,
but the villagers refused to welcome him, because he was determined to go to Jerusalem.
so, the general attitude between Jews and samaritans was one of, we don’t want you here, we don’t want to associate with each other, we don’t even want to hang out in the same town any more than we have to.
And Jesus, simply by being in samaria, and hanging around this well, and talking to this woman, is stepping outside of the norm of Jewish life.
Argumentation
[Common point that Jews didn’t travel through samaria]
What’s funny, is I had that fact in my notes, because I know that I’ve heard it in a sermon before, the fact that Jews would specifically choose to go around samaria.
And I tried to follow up on that.
because I don’t like just repeating facts that I’ve heard without at least doing the due dillegence to trace back where it came from.
And as best as I can tell, that’s actaully not true.
I couldn’t find any evidence in the first century that Jews refused to even travel through samaria.
In fact quite the opposite. It was the normal route for people in galilee to specifically travel through Samaria.
point being, almost as a tangent, side note, we have these bible facts that we hear repeated again and again and again.
And every now and then you come across one that has been repeated so many timess that it sort of just becomes the truth...but as I tried to trace down the origin of this little fact… I found out that it was just flat out not true.
And you can ask lindsay, I re-wrote my sermon twice, becuase I had built the entire sermon around this one little historical detail that Jews refused to even travel through samaria...
so while it makes for a great sermon point, it’s not true...
But what is true, isthe idea that Jews and samaritans avoided each other as much as humanly possible.
They would travel through, sure, they would even shop at samaritan towns, sure, but the idea of hanging around and actually having a conversation, the idea of actually hanging around and building a relationship was unheard of.
Illustration
And what’s funny, is that I think that it makes the point even more relavent to us today.
I think a lot of us, if we hear the version of the sermon that goes “The jews were so against the samaritans that they didn’t even travel through samaria”
As we try to apply it to our lives it almost becomes a hypothetical point.
Like we think to ourselves “hmm, if there was a group of people that I reviled so much that I refused to even go near them, then this text is telling me that I ought to go preaCH THE gospel to them.
but really, I don’t think any of us have people groups in our life that we hate that much.
I can’t think of any group of people that we could reasonably say “I would never even be seen with them”
Application
And what that does, when we start to think about “how do I apply this text to my life” it creates a scenerio where we get to think “well, I mean, I’m already doing that”
Because there aren’t any people groups in my life that I feel that strongly about.
I have no problem talking to these people or those people
I have no problem going to this part of town.
But when we frame it as “These were people that the jews would tolerate, but would never have a relationship with...” then all of a sudden we can’t just check the box and say “i’m already obeying this example of jesus”
Because I can think of a lot of people we’d be willing to make small talk with, but would never dream of actually having a relationship with.
We’re not just talking about going to a homeless kitchen and spending an hour with someone we normally wouldn’t spend time with
We’re talking about developing deep long lasting relationships with the type of people that we would normally only just barely tolerate and make small talk with.
That involves stepping outside of our comfort zone to make deep impactful relationships
that’s discipleship through relationship.
And indeed, later on in the passage it says in verse 40 that Jesus spent two full days with these people.
Transition
And so the first thing we ought to think about when we’re persuing discipleship through relationship is stepping outside of our comfort zone.
And part of that comfort zone, inevitably, is going to mean setting aside the debatable issues, in order to focus on what is truly important.
Point
Statement
Set aside debatable issues to focus on what’struly important.
Explanation
If we look at what happens next in this conversation between Jesus and the samaritan woman, jesus says look, you’ve had five husbands, and you’re living with a man who now isn’t your husband…
the woman replies to this accusation and says
The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.
Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You people worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews.
But a time is coming—and now is here—when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers.
God is spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
I have spent a lot of time with a lot of believers.
And I would be willing to bet that a lot of us Christians,were we in this situation. Had we been sent to preach the gospel to this woman, who had been married and divorced 5 separate times, and was now living with a man who wasn’t her husband.
A lot of us would have gotten stuck on that point.
now let me be clear… the bible is very clear on what is God’s will when it comes to marriage.
in no way shape or form does Jesus ever condone divorce unless in case of adultery… and even then, when Jesus speaks about divorce it’s a concession.
The Bible is extremely clear on what relationships ought to look like..
but in this specific conversation, Jesus mentions to her that he knows that she’s living outside of what God commands us,
And what Jesus doesn’t do is jump on that point like a dog with a bone.
why? well because Jesus knew at that moment that the more important thing in that moment was for her to know the truth about who God is, and who Jesus is.
and it’s not that Jesus condones it. It’s not like Jesus tells her “you’ve been married five times, and you’re living with a man who isn’t your husband...and that’s actually a good thing” no jesus doesn’t condone it at all… but he chooses not to belabor the point…
and then when the woman sort of changes the subject, and starts talking about whether the proper place to worship God is in Jerusalem or on mount gerazim… again, Jesus knows what the correct answer is.
It’s in Jerusalem.
He even says so in verse 22 that salvation is from the Jews… in other words… the Jews are right and the samaritans are wrong...
so it’s not like Jesus just agrees with this woman when she’s wrong....
But what what he does do is chooses to engage with her on the most important point first.
Illustration
When we engage in discipleship through relationship...especially if we choose to go outside our comfort zone...
There are going to be times in which we’re going to have to put a pin in it.
there are going to be times in which someone says or believes something that is just flat out wrong… and we’re going to have to make the decision, is this worth arguing over with this person right here right now… or is this issue something that we can talk about later once we’ve gotten the foundations down?
and that requires some discernment
in matthew 28, Jesus tells his disciples to make disciples:
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
In that order.
and this is a really practical example of how sometimes...it’s wiser to put a pin in something… and focus on what is important first.
We’re not going to have the conversation about your love life right now...that can wait
We’re not going to have the convseration about which mountain is the right mountain… that can wait… what I really want is for you to worship God in spirit and truth, no matter what mountain you worship from.
Transition
That’s the discipleship model that Jesus shows us here. Focusing on what’s improtant first...and then and only then moving on to the issues of obdience...
And Sometimes what happens when we pursue discipleship through relationship in that way, is that we end up planting seeds in the moment that we don’t get to see the results of.
I want to move on to our third point here, which is discipleship through relationship means planting seeds, even when the results aren’t apparent in the moment, by pointing your attention to what happens after this conversation with the Samaritan woman is over.…
Point
Statement
Planting seeds in the moment...
Explanation
Now at that very moment his disciples came back. They were shocked because he was speaking with a woman. However, no one said, “What do you want?” or “Why are you speaking with her?”
Then the woman left her water jar, went off into the town and said to the people,
“Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Surely he can’t be the Messiah, can he?”
So they left the town and began coming to him.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
So the disciples began to say to one another, “No one brought him anything to eat, did they?”
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to complete his work.
Don’t you say, ‘There are four more months and then comes the harvest?’ I tell you, look up and see that the fields are already white for harvest!
The one who reaps receives pay and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that the one who sows and the one who reaps can rejoice together.
For in this instance the saying is true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’
I sent you to reap what you did not work for; others have labored and you have entered into their labor.”
Now, I want you to think about the purpose of Jesus’ earthly ministry.
Not the long term eternal ministry to seek and save the lost, and redeem the whole world back to God, and to inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth. That was Jesus’ Eternal ministry
But think about what Jesus said his ministry was while he was here on earth.
Because what Jesus says here makes sense in light of what HIS immediate earthly purpose was.
Where he says some planted and others will harvest.
I sent you to harvest what you didn’t labor for…
In Matthew 10:5-6
Jesus sent out these twelve, instructing them as follows: “Do not go to Gentile regions and do not enter any Samaritan town.
Go instead to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Later on in Matthew 15, Jesus tells a canaanite woman, an non jewish woman...
So he answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
And in fact this idea that Jesus’ primary mission was first to the Jewish people shows up in the first chapter of John.
He was in the world, and the world was created by him, but the world did not recognize him.
He came to what was his own, but his own people did not receive him.
And here by “his own” what John is getting at is this idea that Jesus went to his own people and his own people, the Jewish people of his day, rejected him.
And if we think about God’s plan for redemption, the order of operations goes like this: First Jesus comes for the Jewish people.
then they reject him, the religious leaders hand him over to be crucified.
And then and only then… only after Jesus is raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of the father does the message of the kingdom go out to all the world.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the farthest parts of the earth.”
And there’s this theme of the message of the kingdom going first from Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth
But at the time being, while Jesus is talking to this samaritan woman, Samaria isn’t on the agenda yet.
And when we think about this passage in light of that, it makes the final few verses seem a bit puzzling.
Now many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the report of the woman who testified, “He told me everything I ever did.”
So when the Samaritans came to him, they began asking him to stay with them. He stayed there two days,
and because of his word many more believed.
They said to the woman, “No longer do we believe because of your words, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this one really is the Savior of the world.”
Argumentation
What’s interesting, is that all througout the book of John, the samaritans never come up again.
They come up a few times in the book of Luke, but really, throughout Jesus’ earthly ministry basically Samaria gets little to no attention besides this one passage.
Why? because that wasn’t jesus mission.
Why then did Jesus even bother?
What was the point of all of this?
I mean sure, Jesus wants everyone to be saved, but he said himself Samaria wasn’t his mission
So why did he even bother to go through here. Why did he even bother to talk to this samaritan woman? Why did he even bother to spend 2 days with them, when they weren’t his primary mission?
It’s because he was planting seeds for the disciples to harvest later.
Now those who had been forced to scatter went around proclaiming the good news of the word.
Philip went down to the main city of Samaria and began proclaiming the Christ to them.
Now your Bible, depending on what translation you have, might say “The City” of Samaria.
Not just any city in samaria, but “the” city of samaria.
The city of samaria, and by that point the romans had conquered it and renamed it to something else at that time, but Philip in the book of Acts has gone out to preach in the historic capital of samaria
In the dead middle of enemy territory, amongst a group of people who don’t want anything do with the Jews, or the Christians, or anything having to do with the Jewish messiah.
Philip goes down there and he preaches about the Christ,
He performs miraculous signs, and the people in samaria believe in Jesus.
And you know what didn’t happen? He didn’t get run out of town the minute he set foot there.
Because what should have happened was that the moment Philip even rolled into town, saying hey everybody, I want to tell you all about the Jewish Messiah, the Samaritans should have told him to go pound sand Philip. We don’t need you here. Get out of here.
The Town of Sychar, and the City of Samaria were neighboring cities. This was the exact same region that Jesus and his disciples had been in when Jesus talked to the Woman at the well, the exact same region that Jesus spent two days planting spiritual seeds, the exact same region that the woman at the well went around saying come and see, I’ve seen the messiah, I’ve met a man who told me everything I’ve ever done.
And the Region of Samaria was the second Domino in Gods plan to bring the message of the kingdom not just to the regions of Judea and Israel, but to the whole earth.
It was because Samaria came to believe that the word was able to spread beyond there to the ends of the earth.
You don’t know the impact that your discipleship will have in the moment.
The disciples had no idea what the results of this one conversation with a woman at a well in the middle of their roadtrip was going to have.
I bet you they wouldn’t have guessed that this one conversation would have eventually paved the way to convert an entire city to the kingdom.
And that entire city being converted was going to pave the way to the gospel reaching the ends of the earth.
At the moment they probably just thought Jesus was just doing what Jesus always did.
Talking with people, teaching people.
Because that’s what Jesus did.
Jesus pursued Discipleship through relationship. and let me tell you, discipleship through relationship Works.
Discipleship through Relationship
Discipleship through Relationship
Conclusion
Imagine sometime far in the future, after you’ve passed on from this life, and you’ve gone to heaven....
And of course in heaven time probably doesn’t work the same as it does here, and obviously it’s not an accurate biblical representation of what heaven will be like, because we can’t possibly wrap our minds around it, but just go with me for a minute..
You’re in heaven, you’re just sitting down to relax,
You get a knock on the door.
Hey someone’s at the gates they’re here to see you.
And you see a young man there and he says “hey you probably don’t remember me, my name’s keegan. I went to a Vacation Bible School in Alliance Nebraska back when I was a kid. And you took the time to get to know me, and you were so kind when I had questions. And that Just always stuck with me, and it was really helpful later in life whne I decided to give my life to Christ.
And so I just wanted to say thank you.
And you go back to your room, you sit down and you just get ready to relaz again and and all of a sudden there’s another knock.
A young woman is there.
Hey you don’t know me. My name is melissa. I was Keegan’s girlfriend in College. I was really into drinking and parties, but I met Keegan and he invited me to a Bible study, and taught me about Jesus. And it’s thanks to him that I’m here now. And I heard you were the one who planted the seed in him back when he was at VBS in Allinace Nebraska so Ijust wnated to say thank you.
You go back, you try to sit down and relax and then.. another knock.
you don’t know me. my name’s Justin. Melissa was my mom. She used to read the bible to me when I was a kid. She told me about Jesus, and she taught me what it looks like to follow him.
And I just wanted to say, thank you.
I don’t think heaven’s really going to be like that. I realize that’s probably not how it works.
But if it was… I hope you never get to relax.
I hope that door knocks non-stop.
You don’t know the impact that your discipleship through relationship can have.
But god does.
And he specifically called you to be a part of building his kingdom.
Pray
