[0:00] So if you could open your Bibles to John 4, verse 1. Now, when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus himself did not baptize but only his disciples, he left Judea and departed again for Galilee.
[0:26] And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
[0:38] 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.
[0:49] A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, Give me a drink. For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
[1:05] The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman from Samaria?
[1:15] For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. 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.
[1:36] The woman said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw water with and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob?
[1:50] He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock. Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again.
[2:05] But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
[2:21] 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.
[2:34] Jesus said to her, Go call your husband and come here. The woman answered him, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, You are right in saying, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.
[2:58] What you have said is true. The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you're a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.
[3:16] Jesus said to her, Woman, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
[3:30] You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, but the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.
[3:50] For the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
[4:02] The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, he is who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things.
[4:15] Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. Just then, his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, What do you seek?
[4:32] Or, Why are you talking with her? So, the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, Come see a man who told me all that I ever did.
[4:46] Can this be the Christ? They went out of the town and were coming to him. Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him, saying, Rabbi, eat.
[4:57] But he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about. So, the disciples said to one another, Has anyone brought him something to eat?
[5:08] Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, there are yet four months, then comes the harvest?
[5:21] Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper may rejoice together.
[5:38] For here the saying holds true, one sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored and you have entered into their labor.
[5:54] Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them and he stayed there two days and many more believed because of his word.
[6:13] They said to the woman, It's no longer because what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and we know that this is indeed the saviour of the world.
[6:25] It's so good to see you all here today. If you're into football, I hope somewhat you've recovered from the big weekend yesterday.
[6:43] Yeah. And thank you to the elders for giving me the opportunity to share God's worth with you all today again. And before we dive in the hood, why don't we pray together?
[6:55] Thank you. Let's bow our heads and pray. Oh, Heavenly Father, we have a heart that is so prone to wonder.
[7:09] And our faith, sometimes it just goes cold. So I ask that you would encourage us, that you may convict us, may comfort us, and correct us where needed.
[7:36] Lord, we're so powerless, yet you're so good and so faithful. Lord, please help us. In Jesus' name we pray.
[7:49] Amen. Yeah, so for the past eight weeks, we as a church have been going through the book of John and getting to know Jesus. And today, I would like to share with you all something that I myself struggle a lot, and I believe some of us also do, and that is making Jesus known.
[8:14] It's not easy. It was never easy for me. And I hope today's passage and also the stuff that I'm going to share may help us.
[8:26] Yeah, so our passage today is from John chapter 4. It would be great if you can keep your Bibles opened and follow along. And I'm going to share two main points. Thank you.
[8:39] Yeah, first point, why make Jesus known? And second, how should we make Jesus known? So the first is, why make Jesus known?
[8:51] Well, from God's perspective, it is mission critical. It's mission critical. How do you know when something is so mission critical to somebody?
[9:03] Well, you can tell by their words, and you can also see from their actions. For example, how determined one is in pushing barriers to achieve their goal, or how willing one is to sacrifice pretty much everything in order to achieve something.
[9:25] If you look at Nelson Mandela, it's not happening, this thing. His mission was to bring democracy and freedom to South Africa.
[9:38] Any South Africans here? No? Well, we'll pray for some. Yeah. A major sacrifice that he has to make is what you see in the picture.
[9:51] He was in prison for 27 years. But that never stopped him to fight. To fight against the apartheid that ruined so many lives.
[10:02] Upon his release, he kept working towards his mission. And despite intense personal, political, and racial barriers, he finally became South Africa's first black president.
[10:16] Through his determination and his sacrifices, we can see what was critical to Nelson Mandela. In the same way, we can see that making Jesus known is mission critical to God.
[10:33] John 4, verse 3 and 4 says, He, Jesus, left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to, he had to pass through Samaria.
[10:46] If we look at this map, Oh yeah, it's happening. It shows us how to get from Judea to Galilee. You see from the arrows, there are two ways.
[11:00] One is longer and the other is shorter. It's obvious that Jesus did not have to go through Samaria. There are two ways. So why did John say that Jesus have to go through Samaria?
[11:14] That is because Jesus insisted on it. He was determined to go there to make himself known despite all the significant barriers that he had to face.
[11:28] What barrier? Well, the first one is racial. Samaritans came from the northern kingdom Israelites who married a bunch of foreigners that the Assyrian kings basically assigned to go live there.
[11:41] So the Jews, well, to the Jews, Samaritans are unclean half-breds. Second is religious barrier. Samaritans are religious rivals to the Jews.
[11:54] This is because Samaritans recognized only five books of the entire Old Testament, the books of Moses, and they discarded the rest of the 34. They built their own temple, didn't want to go to Jerusalem to worship, and they worship other gods too.
[12:11] The third is a social barrier. Samaria. Basically, if you're a criminal and you want to dodge all your penalty like parking fines or whatever, you run to Samaria. And then they will welcome you and they will take care of you.
[12:26] To us, these things are like no big deal, you know, whatever. But to the Jews, the Samaritans are like parasites. And Samaria is like a quarantine hotel during COVID.
[12:38] They absolutely hated their guts. That's why the Samaritan woman was so shocked, you know, that Jesus would ask her for water. No Jews would ever go there and have any contacts with any of them except for criminals.
[12:54] All Jews would rather go the long way around to go from Judea in the south to Galilee in the north. But because Jesus or making Jesus known is so critical to God's mission, God was Jesus who determined to push through all the barriers to go there.
[13:14] Beside pushing through barriers, Jesus also made significant sacrifices to other priorities that he has. We can see that in verses 5 to 7. After a long and tiring hike, you know, Jesus' disciples had all went in the city to get fed.
[13:33] But what does Jesus do? He chooses to miss out. We are talking about the creator of the universe here. Before he became human, he was all-sufficient. He was never hungry, never thirsty, never needed anything.
[13:48] But here, look at him. He's tired and he's hungry and he's thirsty. And not only that, he had to cast aside his divine dignity and go up to the idol-worshipping woman and beg for water.
[14:01] If I asked you to go to a slum in India and beg for water, would you do it? You may, if something is so important for you that makes you need to do it.
[14:13] And so, we can see here that making himself known is really mission critical to Jesus. Jesus says in verse 34, My food is to do the will of him who sent me to accomplish his work.
[14:32] Making himself known according to the will of God the Father is food to Jesus. It's a matter of life and death. If we sing of loving Jesus or seeking to love God with all our hearts and soul and mind, whatever is important or critical to Jesus should also be of critical importance to us.
[14:56] Why make Jesus known? First reason, God's perspective. It is mission critical to him. Now, let's look at the second reason from a human perspective.
[15:09] People need the Lord. people need the Lord. According to science, our greatest need is water because 60% of our body is water, right, Catherine?
[15:21] Yeah. We can last three weeks without fruit but three days tops if we don't have water. But to Jesus, what we really need is living water because without living water, what happens?
[15:37] We're all stuck in the inner thirst which is unquenchable and that is lifelong. Always longing for something but never getting enough.
[15:49] The poor Samaritan woman in our story is a case in point. Jesus says in verse 17, he already had five husbands but she still, she wants another one, a de facto one.
[16:01] God knows what's happened to all of them but she needed more and despite the shame that she'll be copying from her community by having this sixth one.
[16:14] And how about the wisest and richest man the world has never known? Was he not the same? I'm not talking about Elon Musk here. It's King Solomon.
[16:26] First King 11.3 says he has 700 wives. 700 and that's still not enough.
[16:39] You know, while some of us are struggling with one, he had 300, another 300 concubines. That's a thousand. I don't know how he does it. The inner thirst in a human soul is indeed unquenchable and you know, we all have our own ways of expressing it, don't we?
[17:01] You know, doom scrolling, binge watching, you know, the young guys are like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, Netflix, you know, it's unending, right?
[17:11] And then, you know, you have online gaming, online shopping, church hopping, you name it. Nothing is ever enough. So what does Jesus do?
[17:24] He offers the Samaritan and indeed the rest of the world living water. Verse 14 says this, only this water would quench our thirst for life and also beyond.
[17:41] So what is this living water and how does it quench our thirst? In short, living water is the Holy Spirit. John chapter 7 tells us, right?
[17:57] Jesus explains it. Jesus takes a local term, living water, it's usually used to actually describe clean flowing water.
[18:08] It's a common term. And living and clean water is still humanity's greatest need. So he uses that term to help people understand the nature of the Holy Spirit so people can relate to him.
[18:23] We need him like we need clean water water. In order to understand how the Holy Spirit quenches our inner thirst, we must first look at where the problem came from.
[18:35] When Adam and Eve ignored God's warning and took the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, they did not just break a rule. They broke God's heart and also broke their intimate relationship with God.
[18:50] Since then, as a race, we have been really suffering from anxiety problem. Separation anxiety. Separated from our source of endless joy.
[19:03] Separated from the one, the love of our life. We separate it from the one we are made for. And this separation is sometimes called spiritual death.
[19:18] Have you heard that quite a lot of people, they got dogs during the COVID lockdown? Anyone heard of that? Everyone's like cat and dog and everything. Well, when the people, when the lockdown is over, people go back to their normal lives, go out and shop again and go back to work in person.
[19:37] You know what happened to their dogs? They went crazy. Right? They started chewing up half the place. Why? Because they suffered, according to the vets, separation anxiety problems.
[19:52] guys, that's us. To cure us, God let us drink the Holy Spirit. Instead of being separated from us, now He puts Himself, His own presence, into us.
[20:07] In that way, we can become less anxious inside, because the Spirit enables us to experience God's love again, and His presence progressively quenches our inner thirst, too.
[20:21] It might not happen overnight, but it does happen. People need the Lord. The thirst of this life is one need, but there's also another.
[20:34] The Bible says that human also faces the thirst of Hades, which some people call hell. In Luke 16, Jesus told a story of Lazarus, a poor guy, and a rich man.
[20:50] They both died, and the poor guy, well, Lazarus, went to be with Abraham in paradise, and the rich man went down to Hades. There, Jesus described Hades as a place of unrelenting torment, with burning flames and thirsty tongues.
[21:10] Why thirst? Why is thirst in hell? Is there lack of water? 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, verse 9, Paul says, it is because the presence of the Lord is not there.
[21:27] Where the Lord is not, we first. And that would have been us if nobody had made Jesus known to us.
[21:39] People need the Lord. One of the things Jesus said on the cross was, I thirst, right? is in John chapter 19. Have you ever wondered why?
[21:52] It is because perhaps that he who had no sin became sin for us. So on the cross, he lost the Father's presence and endured the agony of hell that we all deserved.
[22:07] God's God's thirst. And as Sam said and quoted, his soul thirsted for the living God. Jesus' thirst on the cross was the fulfillment of Psalm 42.
[22:25] This thirst is something that Jesus had never experienced before, in eternity past, until the cross. he suffered the fire of hell so that our thirst can be quenched and we can have God's presence in our lives now and forever.
[22:45] If you see a video of someone injured, lying by the side of the road, and then you see all these cars, you know, slowing down, taking a look, and then driving off, what would you do?
[22:59] You'd be totally judging those people in those cars, right? You'd say, what on earth? Why don't you get out and help them? You'd be disgusted. People are dying without Jesus right before our eyes.
[23:13] Right before our eyes. Why wouldn't we go nuts to share about Jesus? Making Jesus known is critical to God's mission, and we must make him known because people need the Lord.
[23:29] God. That's our first point. Now, let's move on to the second. There are so many ways to make Jesus known, isn't there? But some are more effective than others.
[23:43] In today's stories, we see that this Samaritan woman was super effective in making Jesus known. Even though she had a bad reputation, she's never been to church, never been to Bible college, never had Sunday school or Bible studies, verse 39 says, many people went to Jesus and turned to him because of her testimony.
[24:08] So perhaps we should really humbly learn from this lady how to make Jesus known. First, we should present Jesus worshipfully.
[24:20] You can follow in the bulletin if you want to fill in the blanks. Look with me at verse 25. Oh, actually, I didn't put it there. Yep, it's in your Bible. Verse 25.
[24:32] The woman said to him, I know that the Messiah is coming, who he is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you, am he.
[24:43] Then, speaking to verse 28, the woman left the water jar and went away into the town and said to the people, come see a man who told me all that I ever did.
[24:54] Can this be the Christ? They went out of the town and they were coming to him. The way this woman made Jesus known was spot on, I think, because she simply presented Jesus and let the main thing be the main thing.
[25:12] all she mentioned was what Jesus has done. He told me all that I ever did. And she asked a question, which in the original text goes something like, this could not be the Christ, could it?
[25:26] It was a humble invitation to explore Jesus together. No gimmicks, no pressure, no lectures, no downloads. Her tweet, you know, or one-liner was enough to have a big crowd running to Jesus.
[25:44] It was not like what she knew, she knew a lot, you know, that helped turn Jesus, draw people to Jesus. It was what she didn't know that helped people to go find Jesus. To present the good news of Jesus, there are only really two points that are truly essential.
[26:01] Who he is and then what he has done. That's what the Samaritan women did too. The rest are all non-essentials. Let me share two examples of these two non-essential topics that have become popular for a while but not always helpful in presenting Jesus.
[26:22] First example is creationism. Some gospel tracks, which I loved, like Two Ways to Live, and I've used that a lot. It uses creation as the first point to introduce people to Jesus.
[26:36] But you can really get stuck on that point alone. You know two ways to live really takes ten minutes to complete. I've spent one hour on the first point on creation alone.
[26:49] Why? Because people in our generation, that's the past 80 years, exclude Don maybe, grew up with Darwinism, the theory of evolution, which by the way had been rejected by over a thousand PhD biologists for over 20 years.
[27:09] But most people don't know that. They think that the theory of evolution is truth. It's like one plus one equals two to them. So they would fight you to the end. Winning a debate on creationism almost never wins people to Christ.
[27:27] Beside, Muslims also believe in creationism, right? And it doesn't mean they would believe in Jesus, not all of them. So we can point people to Jesus first and then let Jesus correct their understanding of creation over time.
[27:45] In his perfect timing, we can be patient. It is their faith that will drive them to seek understanding, not the opposite. Another example of non-essential topics that's becoming unhelpful in in presenting Jesus is heaven and hell.
[28:06] Heaven and hell. Non-Christians used to believe in heaven and hell because it was part of people's upbringing, part of the culture, part of the stories that they grew up with.
[28:20] So it was useful to include in the gospel presentation heaven and hell. But studies have shown that it's no longer the case. our generation thinks that heaven and hell is just like superstition.
[28:36] It's a myth. The younger generation would rather believe in the multiverse, you know, parallel universe, right? You know, there are many worlds and many earths, yeah?
[28:47] You know, why is that the case? Well, they grew up with it. You know, that's the stuff they grew up with, you know, Spider-Man, you know, Avengers, the flesh, right? Yeah, that's what they want to believe.
[28:58] They don't believe in heaven and hell. Well, the apostles in the Bible don't seem to see heaven and hell as an essential point when they present Jesus as well.
[29:11] So let's keep the main thing the main thing. And by the way, you cannot prove heaven and hell actually exist. It says in the Bible, but you can't really prove it.
[29:21] What you can really prove is that Jesus actually died on the cross and rose again. That is historically undeniable fact that you can prove. People nowadays find all the isms in Christianity offensive.
[29:37] Like, you know, Calvinism and all the isms, right? Young people nodding, yeah, I like that, thank you. But surveys have shown that people are actually quite positive about Jesus himself.
[29:50] They just don't know how Jesus is different to other religious leaders or how he's relevant to their lives. We should leverage this positive attitude towards Jesus and learn from this Samaritan woman.
[30:06] Humbly present Jesus and invite people to explore him together. We can say, I don't know everything about Jesus, but I can hear some people say that he's pretty amazing.
[30:20] How about we find out together? Right? Explore him. Meet Jesus. This approach that's as old as the Bible may not be as efficient as thumping the gospel onto someone with four to six Bible verses, but it can be more than effective than you think.
[30:42] Besides content, I also want to share something about the attitude we need when presenting Jesus. Worshipful might be a helpful adjective here because as Jesus says in verse 23, the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.
[31:06] So what is worship? What's worship? Is it just singing a few songs and listening to a sermon and pray? Well, let's say one day you went to this op shop, okay?
[31:18] You got a painting that you like for 20 bucks. Something like this. Looks like a bunch of people working in the Hunter Valley in the vineyard. Yeah. So when you got home, right, you realize it doesn't go well with your furniture and your wall color and all that, so you stuck it in your bathroom wall, right?
[31:39] Like, you know, it's empty there, put it there. A couple of months went by and one of your cousins came and visited your house. After dinner, you know, got a bit full, had to use the bathroom.
[31:49] He goes in there and he comes in, comes out, basically kicking and screaming. Apparently, she's an art auctioneer and this painting, she says, is by who?
[32:01] Van Gogh, right? You guys know your art, I should have done better. It's worth over $100 million. It's going to pay off your mortgage and pay off everything else for the rest of your life.
[32:14] But you have no idea how to take care of this thing. It's too valuable and there's mold growing on it. It's in the bathroom. So your cousin got you connected with some art restoration expert, get the mold off, get all your environment set up, climate control throughout the whole house, and have security in place, you get insurers, you've spent tens of thousands of dollars, right?
[32:37] And then, most importantly, you took the painting outside your bathroom, you're stuck in your living room, you change all your furniture, you repainted the house to go with this painting, right?
[32:49] Yeah, and it's like a full-time job looking after this thing. But you love it. You stop watching TV, you know why? Because you're staring at this thing all the time. You're so happy with it. Everything else can wait because it is so important to you.
[33:03] And this, my friend, is worship. That's worship. Worship in English, and you know English better than me, the word comes from worth and then ship.
[33:14] It's like fellowship, friendship, worth, ship. That's where the word came from. It's worship. It's expressing worth. Whether you're Christian or not, everybody does it.
[33:27] You know, we express worth of what is or who is most important to us. That's the attitude we need when presenting Jesus. We do it because of His infinite worth.
[33:41] We do it because He's worth me rearranging the whole life, all of our life, and spending all that we have, energy, money, time, whatever, in order to present Him and make Him known.
[33:54] And isn't that what we saw in the passage today as well? Look at verse 28. The woman at the well was supposed to get water.
[34:07] What did He do? He left her water jar in order to go make Jesus known. What's she going to drink or cook with or clean with for the rest of the day? She can't just turn a tap on and have water coming in, you know.
[34:20] She needs water. We don't know how the rest of the day went for her, but she probably didn't care. What we know is that she is worshipping.
[34:34] She is worshipping. She is becoming the kind of worshipper that God seeks. In his book, Our Guilty Silence, John Stott says that worship involves witness, and witness involves worship.
[34:50] You cannot divorce the two. And I quote, Worship that is pleasing to God will inevitably send us out to bear witness of the name we have sought to honour.
[35:05] He also wrote, and I quote, that worship which does not beget mission is hypocrisy. How should we make Jesus known?
[35:16] First, we need to present Jesus worshipfully. second, we should also pray for his presence intentionally. This point is about making Jesus known in a big way.
[35:31] In John 4, a spiritual awakening appears to have happened or taken place. Some people call it a revival. It began with one woman meeting Jesus, then verse 39 says many Samaritans believed in Jesus because of this one woman's testimony.
[35:49] And then verse 41 says many more believed in him. That's an explosion of followers. What happened? Well, verse 40 happened.
[36:00] Please take a look. In the Bible, it says they prayed for Christ's presence intentionally. What is intentional prayer? Well, the initial group of Samaritans who believed in Jesus, based on that woman's testimony, were in town.
[36:16] They were in the town, inside the city. Jesus was at the well, which was outside the city. By the way, that well is there, so you can go take a look if you want. It's way outside the town.
[36:28] So they had to walk all the way to Jesus to make their request, and I call that prayer. It was not like the quick prayers that we're used to, you know, before the meal, when you're taking a shower, before you sleep.
[36:41] Whenever, it was a very intentional prayer that they made. They put aside everything. Everything stopped. Stopped working, stopped eating, stopped running errands, stopped serving, whatever.
[36:56] They stopped everything. They took a step at a time together, and they approached the throne of grace. There was nothing convenient about it. That is intentional corporate prayer.
[37:10] What did they ask for? The ESV Bible says they asked Jesus to stay with them. And Jesus stayed for two days. Now, this word stay, sometimes translated dwell or abide, is a huge word in John's dictionary.
[37:27] He used it 40 times in his gospel account. You know, the blue parts on the right hand side, the huge section of the pie, you can see it. He used it 40 times, more than everybody else.
[37:38] And the green section, I'm a bit colorblind, is that green on the top left? Yeah? That's the first John. So, altogether, John uses that word abide or stay more than anybody else in the New Testament.
[37:53] Now, abide means a lot more than doing Airbnb together. It's more like sharing life with each other. We heard about that in John 15 the other week, didn't we?
[38:05] Abide in me as I abide in you. The Samaritans asked for Jesus' presence. And Jesus abided with them, abided in them. He shared life with them.
[38:17] So, what was the result? In verse 41, the ESV Bible says, and many more believed because of his word. Now, is this word some kind of mystery sermon that we don't know about?
[38:31] I don't think so. The verse in Greek here can be translated as something like this. Bottom of the slide here. And many more believed because of him, the word.
[38:46] The word here in Greek is logos. That's what John calls Jesus in John chapter 1, verse 1. In the beginning was the word, the word was God, and the word was with God.
[39:01] The word or logos can mean the message, but people at the time would have understood it to be something else. It means the principle that rules or governs the universe or the cosmos.
[39:15] So Jesus must have claimed the term the logos and shown the Samaritans how he is the true logos that governs and rules the world. God is not some kind of impersonal principle.
[39:29] It is him that rules the world. Therefore, in verse 42, the Samaritans were able to proclaim that Jesus is indeed the savior of the world, which in Greek is cosmos.
[39:43] And verse 42 clarifies this too. These new believers went back to the woman at the well and told her that their belief is no longer based on their head knowledge or hearsay.
[39:56] We don't believe Jesus because of you anymore, they said. We now believe in Jesus because of him. You know how people say, I came to faith because of Billy Graham or John Piper or Tim Keller or David Calderwood?
[40:14] Whoever the speaker may be, people need to believe in Jesus because of Jesus, not because of the messenger. the Samaritans now believe because they have both heard for themselves and know for themselves who Jesus is.
[40:31] To know here means to experience personally. They really got it. Jesus has been really made known in a big way because a group of them prayed for his presence intentionally.
[40:46] So some of us had heard about Jesus. Some of us know a lot about Jesus. But some of us have personally experienced Jesus.
[40:57] These things are not the same. If we want to see an explosion of people who would proclaim Jesus as the Savior of the world because they have personally experienced him, once or twice a year of smoking joes won't be enough.
[41:12] 52 services that we hold here were not enough in a year. We must pray more, a lot more, for his presence and intentionally together.
[41:26] Someone said that a non-praying church is just a playing church. And Lewis Perry Schaefer, who is the president of the Dallas Theological Seminary, also wrote a book called True Evangelism.
[41:44] He said the work of evangelism is more talking to God than talking about God. Or talking to people.
[42:00] In 1857, a late believer, Jeremiah Lenfler, started a lunchtime prayer meeting in New York City. Guess how many people showed up the first time?
[42:12] It was six people. Then by next year, the following year, guess how many people are praying? 10,000.
[42:24] Every single day, 10,000 people gathered and prayed. In New York, this revival, known as the businessman revival, spread across the entire U.S.
[42:37] The estimated 1 million people came to Christ within two years. Two years. Then following that, if you look at history, we have the abolition of slavery, we have prison reform, there was improvement in social justice and women's rights.
[42:59] It all followed because the gospel renewal that started with six people started rippling through the society from within.
[43:12] Jesus' name was well glorified. It all started with six people praying intentionally together. Now, fast forward to 2023, last year, you may have heard of this.
[43:24] In Asprey University, a small private Wesleyan Christian college in Kentucky, USA, a revival also happened. It started after a usual weekday chapel service like what Martin probably does at Newcastle.
[43:40] The chaplain spoke, preached a biblical sermon, I went online and heard it, and then he led a concluding prayer at the end of the service and then students dismissed, goes, go home, go back to class, right?
[43:53] But a few students stayed back. Rather than chit-chat like we always do, and chit-chat is a good thing too, some of them actually stayed back and just prayed.
[44:04] And what happened after that? Next thing you know, more and more students came into the chapel and started praying. More came and more came.
[44:17] And then people started coming from other colleges, from outside the city, from another state. Then people from outside the world, like outside America, their world, started, you know, coming to this chapel and prayed.
[44:32] there are people confessing, there are people repenting, and they're just on their knees and they're worshipping.
[44:46] There's nothing charismatic about this, by the way. People are just spontaneously doing that. This one-hour service, which was extended, became 16 days, 24-7.
[45:02] the town, there's usually 6,000 residents there. 200,000 people showed up within two weeks, asking for Christ, for forgiveness, and they worshipped.
[45:17] And this is the queue that you see on the screen here. I checked their recordings. Guess what they were praying for before all these people showed up? they were simply praying for Christ's presence.
[45:31] They were asking for Christ's peace be here, peace come to us. How should we make Jesus known? Pray for his presence intentionally.
[45:44] Finally, we come to the third and last point of how we should make Jesus known. Well, we should be powered by the joy of eternity. Isn't making Jesus known, isn't laboring for the gospel about obeying the great commission and fulfilling the Christian duty that's given to us?
[46:05] Yes, it is. But John wants to remind the church here not to neglect the joy of making Jesus known. Do it because you want to, not just because you have to.
[46:19] In verse 35, Jesus says, do you not say there are yet four months then comes the harvest? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest.
[46:31] Now it's the harvest. Don't need to wait for four months. Now, what's the big deal about the harvest? In Exodus 23, God commanded Israel to keep the feast of the harvest.
[46:47] And another name of the feast of the harvest is what? Anybody join us? Pentecost, yeah, it's the Pentecost. It's a great time of celebration, isn't it? God wanted to make sure the entire nation would chuck a party because of this harvest.
[47:05] Why? To celebrate His grace. It's a command to rejoice. Here in John 4, Jesus says that laboring for the gospel is just like the time of harvest.
[47:19] It's time to celebrate God's grace. Rejoice. We love singing that song, right? Here, rejoice. Let's look at verse 36.
[47:33] Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruits for or into eternal life so that the sower and the reaper may rejoice together.
[47:45] one of the sobering realities that we all need to face is no matter how hard you work, no matter what kind of money you make, every single cent, you know, all the stuff you save into the super fund that you have, they either get ripped off or it's basically you're not going to carry a single cent with you when we pass on to the next world.
[48:11] But here, Jesus says the fruits that will reap from making himself known will do what? He says if we believe us, we're saving them now.
[48:23] It's like there's a bank account on the other side. It's all going in there. It's all going in there. That is reaping. That is sharing him. And we will get to enjoy every bit of it all the way into eternity.
[48:39] Now that's real super, isn't it? We're not getting ripped off. Christ is saving it all up for us. About three months ago, Dave preached a series on money and wealth. And if you remember, there was one sermon based on Luke 16.
[48:55] There's this unrighteous manager who started taking his boss's money and started forgiving all the debts. In that parable, Jesus explained something about that money.
[49:10] He tells his disciples to use the unrighteous wealth to make friends, so that when the wealth becomes useless, that's after we die, it becomes useless, then what?
[49:21] Then these eternal friends that you made with the wealth that you've had today would welcome you into their eternal homes. So in a nutshell, use what you have today to bring people to Christ so that you have eternal friends.
[49:36] Can you imagine in eternity, you know, you arrive, and all these people flocking at you, like people flock to Taylor Swift or whatever, you know, say, you know, shaking your hands, because why?
[49:49] You have indirectly or directly shared Jesus with them. They're welcoming you to say, hey, can you come to my home for a party? Can you come to my home? They all want you there. They're celebrating you not just because they need something from you or they want to use you, but they're simply grateful, grateful for what Christ has done through you.
[50:12] Can you imagine that? The best part is relative to all the saints that have gone from before us, you know, Abraham who wandered the deserts, Moses, you know, who died in the wilderness, David, you know, suffered all that he had, his sons going berserk on him, and John the Baptist getting his heads chopped off.
[50:36] They were the sowers. They did the hard work. And Jesus said, we didn't have to do that, yet we get to enjoy all the results that they put in, all the work they put in.
[50:48] Shouldn't we rejoice? We should go crazy and be really happy that we have a privilege and that we're just reaping, we're just reaping, we're just reaping for all eternity. I think that should really bring a smile to our face when we present Jesus.
[51:03] The eternal fruits and friends are the only thing we'll ever invest in that will not perish. Jesus is saving it all for us.
[51:15] Nothing will be wasted. We'll get to enjoy every bit of it. We can waste time today, just focusing on making money or making ourselves famous or making whatever, making ourselves feel good even, but we do not waste a single thing making Jesus known, for which we must rejoice.
[51:35] so here we have it. Two points. Why make Jesus known and how should we make Jesus known? Question is, what we are going to do with this as a church community and also individually.
[51:54] In some people's mind, the church is like a cruise ship, but to others, it's a battleship. one day when you get off the ship, would you be a tourist who has enjoyed the ride, or would you be an officer who has completed your mission and ready to be honored by your captain?
[52:19] Which one would you be? Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, thank you that you've given yourself to us.
[52:36] Thank you that you let your son Jesus thirst so that we won't have to for now and all eternity. Father, we say we believe that, yet sometimes our excitement don't show it.
[52:53] So may your Holy Spirit, this living water, really well up within us. Let us experience your love. Let us enjoy your presence.
[53:06] So must show that it really overflows onto like a river that it can be poured out every single day joyfully amongst our neighbors so that we can say we really love them.
[53:20] Help us care. Help us see that people are dying right in front of us. Help us prioritize making your son known as an act of worship.
[53:35] And you say that we don't get because we don't ask. So remind us to ask. Help our brothers and sisters to forget about this official time that we have together.
[53:47] But not forget about it, but we really use our lives, our everyday lives, to be together, to pray, to beg you to pour out your mercy because you're a great God, you're a merciful God.
[54:01] You deserve to be made known and this city needs you, really needs you. We want to see people flogging not into the MCG.
[54:13] We want to see people flogging into your churches so that your name can be greatly glorified. Father, why not us? Please, start a revival through us, even though we are only, well, we're not six.
[54:28] We are a hundred here. Please use us. Make your name great. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.