Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

If you have your Bibles why don’t you go ahead and grab those and turn with me to John chapter 4.

While you are doing that let me just say that it is so awesome having the opportunity to share a Word from the Lord with you this morning.

Now that Thanksgiving is over we are now starting to shift our focus to Christmas.

How many of you already have your Christmas tree up?

Who had their Christmas tree up before Thanksgiving?

Most people I know are adamantly against having any type of Christmas decoration up before Thanksgiving.

I’ve seen people get angry in the Starbucks because they had their Holiday drinks and cups all available with Christmas music playing on November first!

I guess I see their point but it never really bothered me.

In fact, I love Christmas.

I love going somewhere like Starbucks or the mall and you can hear songs about Jesus playing.

I love the opportunities to share with people that Christmas is about Jesus coming into the world to save sinners!

It’s a lay up!

And this is what I want to share with you from God’s Word this evening.

And that is...

Jesus is a missionary sent by God to intentionally reach unlikely people.

I love reading about Christians who lived long ago and were used by God to do incredible things for the sake of the Kingdom.

This week I was reading about a guy by the name of Hudson Taylor.

Hudson lived in the 1800’s and he is known for his mission work in China in the mid 1800’s to the early 1900’s… Around the time Wong Fei Hung (one of my Kung Fu heroes)… He has a really insane story.

Taylor was born to James and Amelia Taylor, a Godly couple who were absolutely fascinated with the Eastern Asia.

This is what they prayed for their newborn son, "Grant that he may work for you in China."

Now I have a 2 year old and another baby on the way and let me tell you… praying something like that is hard for a parent.

But Hudson’s parent’s were specific and intentional that they wanted their little boy to take the gospel to China!

I love that.

Years later, as a teenager, Hudson Taylor experienced a saving faith in Jesus during an intense time of prayer laying stretched out on the floor... his words are that he was, "before Him with unspeakable awe and unspeakable joy."

Have you ever just sat before God speechless?

In your devotional time with Jesus you sit before him in awe and wonder of the gospel?

This is what Hudson experienced.

He spent the next years in frantic preparation, he learned the basics of medicine, studied Mandarin Chinese, and immersed himself even deeper into the Bible and prayer.

Hudson Taylor spent 51 years in China preaching the gospel, ministering to those in need, and translating the Bible into Chinese.

He founded the China Inland Mission which is known today as the Overseas Missionary Fellowship.

And what is so great about Hudson Taylor and what made him so effective in his ministry is that he was Intentional in his mission.

From the time he first got there as a young man he he decided to dress in Chinese clothes and grow a braid (as Chinese men did).

And he hated how the missionaries that were there were spending all of their time near ports with business men who could help them translate.

They made no attempts at learning the language or learning their culture.

Hudson wanted to take the gospel to the inland.

To where there were Chinese who not only have never heard of Jesus but who haven’t even seen a foreigner before.

Everything that Hudson Taylor did was intentional to reaching people with the good news of Jesus.

You see, he saw Jesus as the one who was sent by God and he saw Jesus as the one who sends his disciples into the world to make disciples of all people... No matter how different they are.

What I want you to take away from our talk this evening is that God has a heart for the nations of the World and he gives us this same heart.

God gives us a heartbeat for the nations that transcends cultural and racial barriers.

And Jesus himself demonstrates that for us today in John chapter 4.

So if you have your Bibles opened to John chapter for look with me starting in verse 1...

4 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2(although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria.

5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.

It was about the sixth hour.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Let’s Pray.Father, thank you for sending Jesus to seek us out.

For coming and taking our place on the cross.

We do not deserve it but you loved us that much.

Holy Spirit, come now and open our ears, eyes, and hearts to see our sin and to understand your Word.

In your Sons name… Amen.

7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”

8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.)

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

Let’s Pray.Father, thank you for sending Jesus to seek us out.

For coming and taking our place on the cross.

We do not deserve it but you loved us that much.

Holy Spirit, come now and open our ears, eyes, and hearts to see our sin and to understand your Word.

In your Sons name… Amen.This morning I want us to see three things about Jesus in .

If you are taking notes this is the first thing...

This is the Word of the Lord.

Let’s Pray.Father, thank you for sending Jesus to seek us out.

For coming and taking our place on the cross.

We do not deserve it but you loved us that much.

Holy Spirit, come now and open our ears, eyes, and hearts to see our sin and to understand your Word.

In your Sons name… Amen.

This morning I want us to see three things about Jesus in .

If you are taking notes this is the first thing...

This is the Word of the Lord.

Let’s Pray.Father, thank you for sending Jesus to seek us out.

For coming and taking our place on the cross.

We do not deserve it but you loved us that much.

Holy Spirit, come now and open our ears, eyes, and hearts to see our sin and to understand your Word.

In your Sons name… Amen.This morning I want us to see three things about Jesus in .

If you are taking notes this is the first thing...

Point I: Jesus was intentional with the mission God gave him (4:1-6).

Have you ever thought about this?

Jesus is a missionary.

God sent Jesus from heaven to a people (us) that did not know God to preach good news and see lives changed.

When we go to a foreign land on a mission trip that does not know God we are walking in the footsteps of Jesus.

When we live on mission where God has sent us we are walking in Jesus’ footsteps.

Even your ,schools, classes, and clubs are places to be a missionary.

God has sent you where you are primarily to make disciples of Jesus.

The question to ask yourself is this: Are you being intentional where you are? Look at Jesus in verses 1-6...Jesus knew that God sent him here to make disciples.

To pay for the sins of anyone, not just the Jews, who would believe in him.

If you remember from the chapter before this one Jesus told Nicodemus...

​English Standard Version Chapter 316 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Jesus was sent by God to be the savior for all who believed regardless of where they are from.

This is what I’m thinking.

Jesus is doing ministry.

He is seeing fruit.

People are believing.

And everything that he is doing he is not just doing for the sake of seeing as many people believe as possible… he’s also doing all this to disciple the 12 that are with him.

His 12 disciples are learning from Jesus what it means to live an intentional life.

He is demonstrating in chapter 4.We see in verse one that Jesus hears that there may be some trouble from the Pharisees pretty soon so he decides it’s time to go back to Galilee.

I don’t think that it’s because he’s afraid of some conflict or some hard ministry.