Let us hear God's word. John chapter 4 at verse 27. Just then his elders 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? So the woman left her 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.
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. But he said to them, I have
food to eat, but you do not know about. So the disciples said to one another,
has anyone brought him something to eat? 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? Luke, I tell you, lift up your eyes
and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who weeps is
receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life so that soar and reaper
may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, one sows and another reaps. I
sent you to reap for which you did not labor. Others have labored and you have
entered into their labor. Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because
of the woman's testimony. He told me all that ever I 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. They said to the woman, it is no longer
because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and we
know that this is indeed the Savior of the world. Amen. May God bless to us our
reading from his word.
We are working our way through our vision and values right now. This is the
third week and this is just a look for six weeks at our DNA and who we
want to be here at St. Columbus. Let me read to you one more time our vision
statement that has come out recently from our elders. St. Columbus and our
family of church plants exist to seek a city-wide movement of the gospel by
helping people find and follow Jesus, love God in one another, and seek the
peace of the city. Last week we talked about the fact that every person
needs to find Jesus, discover Jesus, and then follow Jesus. That leads us to
our first two core values here at St. Columbus, which is every person ministry
and public faith. We won't have a sermon on every single one of the core
values. That would be a long, long series, but I did want to stop for a week
and pull this out because it follows directly on from this emphasis we have
in the importance of every person in our city having the opportunity to
encounter Jesus, to find him, to discover him. We say in the vision statement
that we seek to help people find and follow Jesus. If we're going to do that,
that means that we've got to have a mentality that every single person here
is a minister and that that means we're all called to have a public faith,
not a private faith. We'll just pause on that this week and focus on it for a
little bit. Last week we read the first part of John 4 where Jesus encounters
this unnamed woman, Samaritan woman, at a well. He said to her that he could
offer her a drink thirst. He could quench her thirst for something that is
beyond physical thirst. He was talking there about the thirst that every
single person has in the bottom of their soul for eternal life, for eternity.
Ecclesiastes 3. Every single human being, every single person here, every
single person in our city is thirsty, longing for eternal life. That's how God
made us. And so we all need an encounter with Jesus. And that's what happened in
the beginning of John chapter 4. And here in the back half of John 4 we learn
about what that creates. When you have an encounter with Jesus, you become a
minister of the gospel. And the reason we're talking about this, the reason we
long for this, the reason we're focused on this in our vision is because we are
praying as a church, we're praying as leaders here, elders, deacons, women's
pastoral team. We want to see our city in the next generation, in the next 10 to
20 years, move from 2 to 3 percent, meaningfully Christian followers of
Jesus, to 10 percent or more. And that means adding 80,000 new believers, 80,000
new Christians to see it move from 2 percent to 10 percent. And that's what
we long for in this vision. That's what we're praying for. It takes many, many
churches. It takes many, many Christians and a movement of the spirit. And so to
do that, we need to have an every-person ministry focus and a public faith.
That's the two things. Let's look at those two things. Every person ministry and
public faith, it's right here in John 4, 27 to 42 that Billy read for us. So first,
the call to every person ministry, every follower of Jesus is a minister of the
gospel. Verse 27, we've got the woman at the well and she, as soon as she has this
encounter with Jesus and she comes to faith, she runs off into her village,
Sychar, to tell everybody. And if you jump down to verse 39, it says that when
she did that, many Samaritans from her town believed because of her, and here's
the word, testimony. Now the word testimony in Greek, this word here, is
martyrio, and it's where we get our English word martyr. So the martyrs, the
blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church as an example. So this is the word
here. So the word martyr, a martyr, what's a martyr? A martyr is just a person who
gives testimony to Jesus, who bears witness. That's what the word here means.
We'll see in a little while, while it got a greater connotation of suffering,
martyr, that word. But the point is simple, and it's just to say this today, when
you have a life-changing encounter with Jesus Christ, you become a martyr, a
witness. She had had a life-changing encounter with Jesus Christ, and
immediately she ran into the town, her village, because she wanted to tell other
people about it. Let us pray. No, you don't get off that easy. We're not done.
But that's the point today. That's it. When you have a life-
encounter with Jesus, you become a witness. It's just a fact. It's an
identity that actually becomes you. And one of the ways that's especially
highlighted here is the way that John laid out the story for us, which we find
in the book of John in and Mark's Gospel. It's often like this. If you look at last
week, we looked at verses 1 to 30, all about this encounter with the woman at
the well. And then if you look at verse 39 to 42, again, it's all about the woman
and what she did. But right in the middle, it's all about the disciples. So
it's the woman unnamed, the disciples, and we know all their names, and then the
woman again. And so it's a sandwich in fancy Bible terminology. We call that an
inclusio, a sandwich. And there's bread on the outside and there's meat in the
middle. And that means that you're looking at the meat in the middle. John's
pointing you to that. And what is he saying when he does that? She had had
this life-transforming encounter and then the disciples come back to the well
in verse 27. They had been away gathering lunch. So Jesus had said, go to
Sychar, get some lunch, bring it back. So they went, they got some lunch, some bread,
and they brought it back. And here they are. And it says in verse 27 that when
they came back to the well, they saw Jesus and her together. And the ESV says
they marveled that he was talking with a woman. But no one dared say anything
about it. So they dared not say, what do you seek? I like the King James version.
It says they dared not say, what seekest thou? They dared not say, why, why
does dust thou talk to her? They dared not. They kept it in their heart. They
wanted to. Why? Because they felt very, it's saying that they felt so awkward. They
came back and they saw him talking to her. And there was this incredibly awkward
encounter. And what it's saying is that they felt like this was inappropriate.
They saw him talking to this woman in the middle of the day by themselves and in
the first century this was to them wildly inappropriate. And they didn't
want to say a word about it. And the very next thing Jesus does is tells them
this parable, this proverb about harvesting and yielding crops and things
like that. And he's doing that for a reason because he's taking her and
contrasting her with them. That's why the sandwich is there. You've got her, you've
got the disciples, and then you've got her again. And in the middle, in the
middle, Jesus gives them this little parable right after they're so upset.
They think this was so inappropriate. And in verse 32 they say, Jesus, you know,
you're tired, you're hungry, why don't you just eat? And he says this, I've got food
to eat that you don't know about. And he's picking up there on Deuteronomy
chapter 8 verse 3 where we read Moses saying, look, there's spiritual
food and there's physical food. And Jesus says, I've got spiritual food that you
don't know about. And he goes on and says, the spiritual food that you don't
know about is I came to do my Father's will. And so Jesus immediately shifts the
conversation to the category of mission. I came, do you not know that I take such
delight and pleasure? My bread is the word. He's just told her, I can give you
water, whereby you will never be thirsty again, water of life. And now he says, now
we've got bread on the table. And he said, look, my bread is to do the will of the
Father. And then he says, and you know what? Disciples, the field is white for
harvest and I have sent you to reap what you did not sow. And it's a little
confusing maybe at first glance, but what is he saying? He's saying, don't you know
that while you were out getting bread, I was, I was, I went into the harvest. I
came to do my mission, the mission. My life is all about the mission that the
Father sent me to. And he said, and you know what? I've already sent you to the
harvest as well. And what is he saying? He's saying, the disciples don't see it.
He had already commissioned every one of these named men and none of them had any
mission mindset. None of them saw themselves as a martyr, as a witness, as a
person who went into the village to bear testimony. They just went into the village
of Sychar and they didn't say a word to anybody. They got the bread and came back.
But they added, when she, this woman, poor, unnamed, has an encounter with Jesus
immediately in verse 39, we learn she went straight to the village to bear
witness. And Jesus is saying, disciples, the field is white for harvest and none of
you are going out to reap anything. None of you are going out to share with
every single type of person that I've sent you to, the fact that the Messiah has
come into the world. But this woman, as soon as she has an encounter, she goes
straight to the town, the village. And that means that what's happening here is
that the disciples show back up at the well. They see this woman in verse 27.
They dislike her. They think that she, it is socially inappropriate for Jesus to
be talking her. There is a racial barrier, a gender barrier, a religion barrier, and
quite frankly, an encounter that they think is publicly inappropriate by way
of a man speaking with a woman at the well in the middle of the day. And they
can't break through that. And Jesus says, you know what? She is your school master.
She's the one who's here to teach you. She had an encounter with the Messiah
and she ran straight to the village to testify to bear witness and none of the
disciples saw it. They couldn't see it. And that means it's a simple point, but
she was showing them, she was showing them as an example that every single
person who has an encounter with Jesus becomes a minister of the gospel. And so
here we talk about ministers and this can be confusing language. Ordained
ministers, people who have been set apart, called by the Holy Spirit to lead a
church as an officer of a church. We have that and I serve in that role and
others do as well. But every single Christian is a minister of the gospel.
Every single Christian. Every single Christian is a martyr, a witness. And so
today friends, if you have had an encounter with Jesus Christ, it is
who you are. And the disciples couldn't yet see it, but this unnamed woman, she
saw it. And I think that's a simple invitation today. One is to see that here
the word testimony to testify to bear witness martyred them. It's exactly the
same Greek word that Jesus uses in Acts chapter 1 verse 8 when he says in his
commission, you church will be my witnesses, my testifiers, my martyrs
from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the very ends of the earth all the way
to this little end of the earth we have here, the city of Edinburgh. And that's
that's the language he uses. And we come this morning to testify, to be martyrs,
to testify to him in worship and then go out into the world and testify to him
as well. Let me bring this home. I think one of the ways to think about this is
that this is an invitation today to ask the question, do I do I I'm asking this
question to myself this week. Do I approach Christianity largely as a
consumer, largely as a person who comes here as a follower of Jesus week by week
and if you're not a Christian today, this is not for you, but I'll come around
in just a minute to everybody else. But if you're a follower of Jesus day friend,
the question, do you come to this space largely as a consumer? And the nature of
the gospel is this, that Jesus Christ gave everything, He gave himself fully away,
you get everything in the gospel, pardon a living relationship with God, to then
be sent, to then go then to give, to serve, and even worship is that space. So in
worship we come not merely to get, oh no. And so one of the questions maybe we can
ask this week is, is the posture I come to even in the worship space one of mere
receipt, mere receiving, or do I come actually to give first glory to the
living God? And so the idea, the logic of this space is that because Jesus has
given everything to you already, you come today to lose your time, to lose your
treasures, to give away your goods, to give glory to the living God. And then
when you go out, because Jesus is giving you everything and has given you
everything, you give yourself away to the witness, the martyrdom that you're
called to in this city. And I love what Dietrich Bonhoeffer says about this, he
talks about the distinction between a person that's been transformed by the
gospel through and through and cheap grace. And cheap grace is where we come
to get, but never to give, never to count the cost, never to say Christianity
really does cost me something. I've got to change my life in response to him. I've
got to become a witness in response to him. I heard, I don't know where I heard
this first, but you've heard this quote probably, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the late
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, I first heard him say it, he said, in the age of Amazon,
the world is no longer our home, it has become our market. And in the same way
because we live in the age of Amazon all the time, we can come to
treat everything as a market. And let me just say to everyone here that we're
not selling anything, Christianity sells nothing, we don't have anything for sell
here, because the Christian life, the Christian life is the call to see that
Jesus Christ saw you all the way to the bottom yet loves you to the sky. And, and
go and give your life away for him. A deep cost, nothing cheap about it, nothing
for sale. Gavin Ortland puts it like this, I love this quote from Gavin, he
says, pursuing our own glory in this life, consumption, a mere life of
consumption is pathetic and boring, but seeking the glory of Jesus Christ is the
most thrilling and thralling adventure you could ever spend your life on.
Everybody is living as a consumer in this world, that is boring, we're all doing it,
everybody's doing it, do something different, he says. The most enthralling,
thrilling thing you can do is give yourself away as a witness in every
person ministry for the sake of a citywide movement of the gospel. Now the
Samaritan woman saw that she got it so secondly and finally she exhibited a
public faith, what does that look like, what is it, what is a testimony, what does
it mean to testify, that's what we learn about here. And so let me, let me give you
four quick things that it looks like to have public faith that we learn from
her today and will be finished. The first thing to notice here about her public
faith is that it's simple and there's I think two types of simplicity. The first
is when you look at verse 39 it says that many Samaritans from her town, her
hometown believed in Jesus because of her testimony and what does she say, she
just said this, he told me all that I ever did. And just note the simplicity of
living a real public faith from her example. There she did not, she did not
go into her village with a sermon, she did not go into her village with an
elaborate method, she did not go into her village handing out tracks, those can
all be okay things but she didn't do any of that, she didn't have a program, she
didn't have a track, she didn't have a sermon. She went simply to the people
that she knew and she was actually just herself. And so the first thing to say
about public faith is public faith is just being yourself.
Follower of Jesus, go into the city and be yourself. In other words, live a life
in the way of prayer, gospel-centered life and then just be yourself, be honest.
So I think the simple thing to say here is that public faith first as opposed to
private faith is simply honest faith. And that's no beating people over the head.
It's responsible witness and responsible witness is always being ready to give an
answer for the hope that is within you. I think even from the life of Jesus here
when he encounters the woman at the well, you can see that Jesus went to the
woman at the well and just all he did was asked for a cup of water and then she
initiated a conversation about the meaning of life. And he took that
opportunity, he responded to that. And responsible witness testimony
martyred him in the most technical sense of the word, is simply going out into
the city with honest faith. With just being who you are, looking for
opportunity to say something about Jesus when the opportunity arises. It's an
honest public faith. One writer, when he writes about this, he says, here's the
opposite of that, the way to fail. As he says, the way to fail at this is to be a
Christian and to hide who you are. And the question here today is if Jesus Christ
is the way that you structure your life, if Jesus Christ is the one from whom you
make your decisions, if Jesus is really the center of your life, then sharing
your life with other people will come out. It has to. If you're just honest about
who you are, if Jesus really is the center of your life, then it has to come
out. If you're just being honest about who you are. But, and here's the hard part,
if Christ never comes up, if Jesus never comes up in our lives, the question
today, the diagnostic question is, is Jesus Christ really essential to us as
he ought to be? If we're living a life of public faith, is he really essential to
us as he ought to be? The second thing here to note about public faith is a
second type of simplicity is just very practical. Jesus simplicity as it has
been called. What does she say when she goes into her town? She says, come and see
a man who told me all that I ever did, verse 29. And then again, he told me all
that I ever did. So she said in her town, come and see a man, Jesus, who told me all
that I ever did. It's important to say, I think, that she does not know very much
about him. She does not have the epistles. You know, she doesn't have the rest of the
gospel. She doesn't have the cross at her back. That hasn't happened yet. She
actually does not know very much about him. And one of the things that you think,
I think we see that so striking is yet Jesus upholds her as an example of true
testimony. And that means that there's just a Jesus simplicity. What do you take
to the city? You just take Jesus, just Jesus simplicity. And you can go out into
the city and say, you know, I don't know very much about the age of the earth. And
you know what? Nobody does. That's the truth, because we change it every year,
the consensus. How old is the world? I don't know. And nobody knows. And you
might not know very much about science. You might not know very much about
philosophy. And you might not have your answers ready for what to do with
sections of the book of Judges when it comes up, right? This woman didn't know
any of that. And she just went out into the city with Jesus simplicity. And what
is it? What's the content here? What is she exactly saying when she said, come and
see a man who told me all I ever did? She's not literally saying, Jesus, you know,
set with me for so long day after day and told me everything I'd ever done in my
life. You know, that would be impossible. What is she saying? She's saying, he told
me about the situation that I'd been living in. Jesus had said to her, I know
that you have had five different husbands and the man you're living with
right now is not your husband. In other words, she's saying, he told me the
deepest secrets of my heart. And he loved me anyway. That's what she went and
told them. That's the implication here. She went into her village and said, let me
tell you about a man who saw me all the way to the bottom in every bit of my
ugliness and loved me all the way to the sky anyway. She went out with Jesus
simplicity. She said, look, there are secret sins and misdeeds dark down in the
bottom of my soul that nobody knows about. And is that true of you? Have you made
mistakes? Are there things in your life you don't want other people to know
about? Is there guilt? Is there shame? She went into the city and said, let me tell
you about a man who knew every bit of that about me and said, I love you and I
want to give you eternal life. Jesus simplicity. That's all you can say
today. You know, I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can tell people
about Jesus and she didn't know anything. She didn't know anything. And we can. We
can. We can go and bring Jesus simplicity. Third afford. The third thing we say here
is that she had a public faith that was courageous beyond her culture. And so
here, remember back to verse 27, the disciples come to this encounter with
Jesus and her at the well and they are so awkward by the cultural barrier that
they just keep it quiet. So they feel actually offended by Jesus in this
moment. They think that he's done something inappropriate, crossing every
single one of these cultural barriers, but they don't. They're not even
courageous enough to ask their rabbi, their savior a question to say, Lord,
help us understand. They're not even courageous enough to do that. They just
suppress it in awkwardness. And then you get to verse 39 and remember this
woman. Do you remember that from last week if you were here, she came to the
well at the middle of the day by herself when it's normally the case that the
women would come together to the well in the mornings and evenings. And that
means that though she was separated from Jesus by religion, by race, by gender, in
every category, she was also completely separated from her own people. She was an
outcast amongst her own people. That's why she's at the well in the middle of
the day. And she goes straight to her hometown to every single person she
knows and says, let me tell you about a man who told me all I ever did come and
see him. She broke through every cultural barrier that was at
place between her and the people that she knew. And you've got to believe, you've
got to believe that because she's clearly an outcast in her town, she would
have come to her town and they would have said, nobody listens to her. Look at
what is she on about? And we're going to see this in just a moment as we close in
verse 40. She started a city-wide movement of the gospel. She broke through
every cultural barrier. Why? Because Jesus Christ had broken through every
barrier with her. And when you see that Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
the Son of God himself, loves you, knows you to the bottom and yet loves you to
the sky to the point that he became flesh. He humbled himself all the way to
the point of being willing to die in your place. He broke through every barrier.
And the greatest barrier was him going down to hell itself at the cross.
Boy, can we break through barriers? Can we? Can we? Because we've received so much
now go and break through a barrier to talk to somebody about Jesus, to say,
let me tell you about a man who knew me and all my guilt and all my shame and
yet loved me right through it, loved me to the point to die for me.
The fourth and the final thing we see here is that she did indeed, through
the Holy Spirit, start a city-wide movement of the gospel. She became
in very popular modern productivity language. She became a movement leader,
as we say. Jesus used her, the Holy Spirit used her, this woman to such a
degree that in verse 39 it says, many people believed because of her testimony.
And then many Samaritans came out to him and they said, please stay with us.
And so he did. And then it says in verse 41, and so many more believed because
of his word. And they said to the woman, it's no longer because you told us to
believe that we believe, it's because we encountered him and now we believe.
And here we see just a very simple thing that the Lord loves to actually bless
the witness of his people. And so when we go and we do share the gospel with
other people, the Lord by the Spirit loves to say yes to that and loves to
start city-wide movements of the gospel amongst the people we know. Let me close
with this. What do we need today? What do all of us need today to break through?
We need to break through and to say, I am a witness. I'm a testifier. I've come
to give glory to the Lord in worship so that I can be strengthened to go and
give glory testimony to the Lord Jesus outside this building in our city.
What do we need to break through? And let me just give you two things to close.
We need the freedom and purpose that she had. And I think the first thing to say
is simply this. She had a real freedom that was given to her by this gracious
encounter she had with Jesus. One more time, final time, what did she say?
Come and see a man that told me all that I ever did. The only way that we're ever
going to be people who make witnessing, testifying, bringing our testimony to
other people in our lives a spiritual discipline, a regular encounter. The only
way that's ever going to happen is if we really do have a fresh encounter with
the gospel where we can say, he really is a man who saw me all the way to the
worst and loved me anyway. In other words, if you really do have an experience
of the gospel in your life and you really do know yourself as a sinner, if you
really can say today, Jesus knows me at my worst yet loves me all the way to
making me into my best, conforming me to the image of the Sun. Ultimately, one
day, if you can say that, then you can go out into the city risk-free. You
have the assurance of love that can never be taken from you. You can know
that no matter what somebody else thinks about me, I know what he thinks about me.
And so I'm okay. I'm willing to lose a relationship. I'm willing in a responsible
wise manner to go and extend myself to somebody so that they would know about
him because he knows me to the bottom and loves me to the sky. You can say
that, you can say today, because I am his treasure, I'm not afraid of losing
treasures in this life. And the second and final thing is I think a freedom that
we all need that's brought to us by conviction. And so the very last thing
and the very end of the passage, when the Samaritans came in verse 42 to see
Jesus, they said to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we
believe, we have seen for ourselves and now we know that he really is the saviour
of the world. He indeed is the saviour of the world. Let me just highlight one word
there. The Samaritans came to him and they said now we can say he really is the
saviour of the world. He indeed is the saviour of the world. And I just wonder
today, you could be a person here, a Christian, a follower of Jesus who feels
with me today the struggle to say I am a witness, who feels with me today the
struggle to say God really has commissioned me to go and tell somebody
else, let me tell you about a man who knows me to the bottom, loves me to the
sky, come and see. And maybe one of the ways to break through that is that we all
need such a fresh encounter with Jesus in our weekly life and our day-to-day life
today where we could be enabled to say he really is the saviour of the world. Not
just I come to church and I'm you know he is, but to say he really is. And I
think for some of us that might mean coming again and re-exploring the
claims of Jesus. You could have been a Christian in this room for 20, 30, 40,
50, 60 years and it may be time to come and say I actually need to re-investigate,
to actually process intellectually, emotionally, and through my volitional will
the claims of Christianity again. Not because I'm walking away, not because I'm
doubting, but because I need to be reignited, I need to be fueled, I need to
be able to say he really is. Have you done that before? Have you, if you've grown
up in the church, have you broken through the cultural barriers that are in place
in your life and come to explore the claims of Christianity, is he really the
saviour of the world? He really is the living water, he really is the bread of
life. And so for a city-wide movement of the gospel may we go forward as his
witnesses. Let us pray. Father, we thank You for this word and we ask now that You
would give us an every-person ministry and a living public faith, not out of
guilt, Lord know, but by a fresh encounter with the gospel. And so we pray for
this in Jesus' name. Amen.