OUTREACH AFTER BEING REACHED

Introduction

-Having just celebrated Memorial Day last week, I wanted to read a snippet of an article about one of our brave men who gave his life for his country 15 years ago in the war in Iraq~~

The article reads:

~Growing up in Bay Shore, NY, Private First Class Jacob S. Fletcher dreamed of serving his country. He always wanted to be a soldier. He always had that kind of passion in him, and he wanted to be that kind of man.

~The death of a friend in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks sealed the decision. He enlisted in the Army, becoming one of the first soldiers to parachute into Iraq.

~Fletcher died on November 13, 2003, at the age of 28 when explosives struck a bus he was on in Iraq. A family friend said: “He was making a difference in Iraq. He felt that he was helping the women and children and that meant very much to him. It sustained him.”

-What drew me to this particular article is that there was a major event that personally affected this man’s life, and it caused him to take action for the welfare and benefit of the nation and its citizens.

-And just like a life-changing event sprung him into action, we who have believed upon Jesus Christ have had just such a life-changing event, and it ought to spring us into action as well.

-The Lord Jesus Christ sent someone into our path to tell us the good news of the gospel: that Jesus died to pay for our sins, and all who believe on Him receive life. And when we did believe, not only was our earthly life changed, but our entire eternal destiny was changed.

-But we were not only reached by the gospel so as to keep that news to ourselves, but that we would then in turn tell others about it. And we find this in our gospel passage today.

-To understand the context of our passage, we find that Jesus and His disciples were making a short-cut through Samaria. And as the disciples went to get supplies, Jesus sat by a well and began a conversation with a Samaritan woman with a past, and offered her living water. Jesus revealed Himself to her as the long-awaited Messiah, and it is there that we pick up the story.

-And what we find in today’s passage is that the consequence of what Jesus said to her and offered her finally struck her, and realizing who it was that reached out to her, she left what she was doing to reach out and tell others about Him.

-My prayer is that we are led to reach out to others as well since Christ used someone to reach out to us.

John 4:27–30 ESV

27 Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.

-I want to mention 3 quick points for our consideration today:

I) The love of Jesus for souls is scandalous

-Now when I say that it is scandalous, I do not mean it in modern day contexts. Usually a scandal is some bad action that someone committed and got caught with and it makes a whole bunch of other people mad.

-We are so used to that kind of scandal in our day and age. Be it someone tweeted something very stupid and they then have to pay the consequences, or even in our own SBC, things that people of said in the past come back to haunt them.

-But this is not the biblical idea of scandal. What scandalous meant in the biblical concept is that it caused a stumbling block—it was something that tripped people up a bit, and whether good or bad, it made people reassess or reevaluate the situation.

-And so it is within that definition of scandalous that we can categorize Jesus’ love for people. Jesus reached out with the loving message of the gospel to people that really nobody else wanted anything to do with, and it tripped folks up.

-And we see this in our passage—the disciples could not figure out what in the world Jesus was doing talking to a woman, much less that particular woman.

-Back in that day and age, Jewish men did not talk to women in public who were not personal relatives. And, as is pointed out earlier in this chapter, Jews and Samaritans really didn’t have anything to do with one another. There was a lot of animosity.

-So here is Jesus talking in public to a Samaritan woman who has a shady past. The disciples could not figure out why Jesus would break such social norms.

-But I’ll tell you why—Jesus came to seek and save the lost, and she was one of them. So Jesus did not limit Himself to only seeking the socially acceptable people—He sought everybody because He loved everybody and came to save everybody who would believe. And that meant her.

-And you know what that means—it means He is seeking you too. And it also means that Jesus is seeking those whom we “good Christian conservatives” think might cause a scandal if we were seen with them.

-But Jesus didn’t care what scandal He caused—He hung out with the tax collectors and prostitutes and all that in order to reach them. Jesus loves the unlovable and the untouchables and wants them saved.

-In his book, FRESH WIND, FRESH FIRE, pastor Jim Cymbala of the Brooklyn Tabernacle told of how his church started to reach out to transgender prostitutes in New York who were heavy into drugs and filled with disease. Many came to Christ because these church members became tools used of God to reach these people. A few years later, one of them was dying of a disease related to his sin, but he couldn’t stop thanking pastor Jim and the church for loving him and introducing him to Jesus.

~You see, what they figured out is that Jesus’ love for souls means everybody, and sometimes it is scandalous.

-If Jesus so loves, what about us?

II) The value of Jesus, when understood, brings new priorities

-What we find in our passage is that once things kind of clicked with the Samaritan woman, she ran off to tell others, leaving her water jar behind.

-She had specifically come to the well to get water, but at that moment, after getting a taste of the living water, after getting a small glimpse of the value of Jesus, everything else would have to wait, because there was something more important going on.

-This is a reminder to us that those things of eternal value are so much more important than things of mere earthly value.

-Not that we are to completely ignore the things of earth. We still need to eat and sleep and have shelter and take care of our families and such. But the things of earth move down the food chain of our priorities: ONE, because we know that God will take care of us; and TWO, Jesus is more valuable than anything that we have on earth.

-Once you taste and see that the Lord is good, once you have been reached by Him and find out how much He loves your soul, everything else just pales in comparison.

-For the Samaritan woman, water was just going to have to wait. She had been confronted by Jesus, and even though she didn’t fully comprehend Him, she knew that He was of so much more value and that He would take priority.

-Jesus Himself taught in the gospels that once you grasped Him and once you grasped the Kingdom of God that He ushered in, you will do anything and give up everything to make it your top priority.

-Jesus shared in Matthew:

44 "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

45 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls,

46 who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

(Matt. 13:44-46 ESV)

-These almost sound like exaggerations, but they are not. What He was emphasizing is that once you know Jesus, you will find Him to be of such more supreme value than anything else, that you are willing to sacrifice anything and everything to have Him.

-This means that you are willing to place Him above everything else in your life.

-There are those whose lifestyles demonstrate that sports or games or entertainment or maybe their jobs are of more value (or are higher in priority) than Jesus. How would you measure that? By the amount of time and resources that are invested in them compared to being invested in Jesus and Kingdom work.

~But what if I said that I would give you $1,000,000 to completely give up that sport or game or whatever for the rest of your life, would you do it? Most of us would say yes.

-Of how much more value is Jesus Christ than $1,000,000? Why then is He not your top priority, and therefore what He calls you to do of utmost importance in your life?

III) The gift of Jesus is easy to share with others

-The Samaritan woman leaves Jesus to go into the village to tell the people what she has just encountered. Here is this woman who went to the well at the time of day she did to avoid these people because of the hard time they usually give her because of her reputation. All of a sudden, she’s telling them about this amazing man.

-She doesn’t know everything fully about Jesus. She’s still figuring out if He really is the Messiah or not. But she goes and tells them of the experience she had and invites them to check it out for themselves.

-Notice this—she did not give some long theological treatise of why Jesus really is who He claims to be. She didn’t follow some preset outline.

-This is what she did. She shared with them her experience with Jesus, and invited them to check Him out for themselves. That’s it.

-So many people think that reaching out with the gospel requires an abundance of knowledge and the ability to answer every question imaginable. That is unrealistic. Even pastors and scholars don’t know everything about Jesus and can’t answer every question.

-Reaching out to others is merely telling them your story—that you encountered Jesus, He changed your life, and He can change theirs as well. Pretty simple isn’t it.

-People hate to share Jesus because they are afraid to get it wrong or say the wrong thing. We’ve got to get over that. If you are telling people what Jesus did in your life, you can’t get that wrong. And inviting them to check Him out for themselves, you can’t get that wrong either. There is no wrong way to tell people to check Jesus out.

Conclusion

-If Jesus reached out to you out of love, you can reach out to others. Let them know that Jesus loves them scandalously, and that He wants to be their top priority, and He changed your life and can change theirs too.

-Maybe you need to come to the altar today and pray for courage to reach out to others. Maybe you need to come to the altar and pray for opportunities to reach out to others. Maybe there is somebody specific that you know needs a touch from Jesus and you want to pray for them…

-But maybe you yourself need Jesus...