Today we have an introductory message to a course we would like to run called “Christianity Explained”. In an Australian study in the early 80’s it was recognised there had been a decline of understanding about Jesus, the Bible and the Gospel in Australia. Between 1955 and 1980, weekly church attendance had dipped from 33% to 18.8% of the population.
What about New Zealand?
When would you guess church attendance was highest in New Zealand? Most people would guess that church attendance peaked in New Zealand in the 1950s, so before the significant social changes that occurred in the 1960s. Some people suggest the 1930s, so pre-World War Two. But the truth is it was much earlier than that. In fact it was the 1890’s. New Zealand has been an increasingly secular country as this graph shows.
According to Wikipedia, there are 52,910 people in Papatoetoe as at June 2023. How many people do you suppose are in Church on a Sunday in Papatoetoe. Would it be 1500 do you think? That would be around 2.8%. The reality is that New Zealand is not a Christian country, it is secular. We are now living in a mission field.
When you see someone in the street or at the shopping mall, you can guess very well that they have not been to Church this year, maybe never and know next to nothing about Jesus or the Gospel.
This made us think that perhaps we need to change tack. When we did our recent series on Daniel, how many people in Papatoetoe would be able to understand the end times message for us about Jesus coming soon if they don’t even know who Jesus is.
The implication is that we have to go back to the beginning, tilling the ground in the winter, removing any rocks, prepare the soil, plant the seed in early Spring, add some fertiliser, water the soil when it doesn’t rain, tend to the weeds and wait for the harvest to finally come on Summer and then bring in the crop!
Australians and New Zealanders are very laid back, we like to go with the flow. That’s great, to have success with evangelism requires the Holy Spirit. but there are things we also need do to get a harvest;
1. Pray for opportunities
2. Look for opportunities
3. Equipped for opportunities
The preparation for the course begins by looking at the passage in Chapter 4 of John about the woman who met Jesus at the well. It’s a great insight into witnessing your faith to anyone in an everyday situation, you may recognise a lot of the stages in the conversation yourself.
John 4:1-6
Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John (though Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples), He left Judea and departed again to Galilee. But He needed to go through Samaria. So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
The sixth hour is midday or lunchtime.
The Gospel of John describes Jesus' journey to Jacob’s well; He'd been down in Jerusalem for the Passover (John 2:23), then baptising people alongside John (John 3:26) and was heading back to Galilee where Nazareth is, passing through Samaria about halfway between the two.
Jacob’s well pinpoints an exact location that Jesus sat down to rest.
This is a modern photo of the exact location. You can see from the geography how it is a crossroads. There is Sychar over to the bottom of right with Jacob’s well over to the bottom left. In the middle of the photo is Shechem. At the top left is Mt Gerizim which is important later in today’s story and at the top right Mount Ebal. You can see it is not a big place. Seven years ago we studied the little town of Shechem, the place where the Lord first appeared to Abraham in Canaan and where Abraham built his first altar. There are at least 6 interesting things about Shechem which make it biblically very significant.
1. The first is that Shechem is where Abraham's grandson Jacob bought a field (Genesis 33)
2. The second is that Shechem is the place where Jacob sent Joseph to where his brothers threw him down the well, probably the same field that Jacob had purchased (Genesis 37)
3. The third is that Joseph is buried there based on a prophecy given to Abraham in Genesis 15 and mentioned in Joshua 24.
4. The fourth is that Shechem is the place where not long after entering the Promised Land and gaining victories at Jericho and Ai, Joshua renewed Israel's covenant with the Lord and gave instruction about what the Israelites had to do to receive the blessings or cursing of God as per Moses' instructions (Joshua 8)
5. The fifth is that Shechem is geographically at a Crossroads. At the end of his life, Joshua gave one final challenge to the Israelites to decide who will they serve. (Joshua 24)
6. The sixth is that Stephen referred to this history in his lengthy speech to the Council in Jerusalem in Acts 7 just before they stoned him to death.
John 4:7-8
A woman of 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.
Jesus was not very polite was he? He didn’t say please. Here we see the human side of Jesus. He was tired, he was hot and he was thirsty. And a woman turns up to fetch some water. I can relate to that, when I’m tired, hot and thirsty, I just want to rest and get refreshed. The last thing I’d want to do is expend more effort witnessing to a stranger. But she does have some water.
The question catches the woman off guard. She had noticed he wasn’t from around town, that he was a Jew. And she may have wondered what was a Jew doing in a no go zone like Shechem?
John 4:9
Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
Who were the Samaritans? There on the map are the the locations given to the 12 tribes of Israel.
In Jesus day, these were the people that the Jews despised. This is true to this day as Samaria is now part of the West Bank.
1. The Samaritans claim descent from the tribes of Joseph (Manasseh and Ephraim) and the Levites and are therefore Israelites
2. Part of the group that split away from the House of David at the time of Jeroboam
3. Governed by the Palestinian National Authority (PLO/Israel Government) today. Think Yasser Arafat.
Why did the Jews hate them?
The Samaritans were a mix from the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim who had inter-married with the pagan nations. In 1 Kings 11, when Jeroboam rebelled against the House of David and set up the Northern Kingdom, he created a base at Shechem and designated nearby Mt Gerazim as the place to worship.
But thanks to Jeroboam, the Northern Kingdom continued worshiping false gods alongside the true God and the 2 won't mix.
Because of this in Jesus' time, the Samaritans believed the correct place of worship and indeed Isaac's sacrifice was at Mt Gerazim next to Shechem. Mt Gerazim is in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank about 50km north of Jerusalem.
John 4:10-15
Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”
Opportunities to share the Gospel are there in every part of life if we’re looking and willing. So often we are hot, tired and too thirsty ourselves to pay attention to someone else’s need or even to realise that our own need isn’t physical, a change of job, or clothes or hair or another place to live. Do we even realise that Jesus has living water for us that we can have eternal life and never thirst again?
John 4:16-19
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.
Jesus knew the truth that the woman was living in sin, in at least her 6th relationship. We can’t hide our secrets from the Lord.
This woman was at a Crossroads in her life when she met Jesus there at the Crossroads at Shechem.
There always comes a point in someone’s life when God brings them to a Crossroads and then what will they choose. The narrow way or the Broad road?
Our response to Jesus is so crucial. Was she going to continue in her life of sin or would she follow Jesus?
The woman could have got angry with Jesus - "Who are you to judge?"
Or she got have embarrassed and lied. "We're going to get married soon".
But she tried instead to change the subject. She didn't want to talk about it!
First she tried small talk asking him about his job - "You must be a prophet".
John 4:20-24
Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.”
So she moved on to a subject that everyone liked talking about in her day - religion. She assumed a prophet would love to talk about religion. In our day we might move it quickly on to Donald Trump. But Jesus wasn’t going to be sidetracked by another topic. He was not going to let her off the hook.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
He used the topic she brought up to make a point about worship not being about the right place but about how we worship, whether we have the Holy Spirit it or not. She knew she didn't have the Holy Spirit, that she wasn’t born again, that was her real need.
John 4:25-30
The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He. ”
She didn't know who the Messiah was, she was lost. But Jesus was there for her. He told the woman "I am the Messiah, I'm the one you've been looking for". It was checkmate.
And at this point His disciples came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman; yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why are You talking with her?”
Isn’t it strange that when you are witnessing to someone and you reach that crucial point in the conversation where the person is captured in their thought about God, that just at that moment there’s a disruption, a distraction and the moment is lost. At this point, the disciples come blundering in, killing the moment. How ever the moment was in the Lord’s hands. When it is in the Lord’s hands, the moment is not wasted, so we need to hand it over to Him. We shouldn’t feel we have to rush the person to the altar. Take it that God has done what he needed to do. We look with our eyes. God looks on the heart. The woman was already changed.
The woman then left her waterpot, went her way into the city, and said to the men, “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” Then they went out of the city and came to Him.
In that short conversation with the woman, she had experienced the miracle of prophecy in her life and her eyes had been opened and now she wanted to bring others to Christ.
John 4:31-38
In the meantime His disciples urged Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But He said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” Therefore the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.”
The disciples seemed completely oblivious to the spiritual conversation and what had just taken place in the woman’s life. Instead all they were interested in was eating because it was lunchtime. Isn’t that so often the case for us as well, not really in tune with the spiritual need around us, concerned only for ourselves. Jesus, was hot, tired and thirsty and you would have thought hungry too as it was midday and lunchtime. But he had only asked for a drink. He didn’t ask for food. He told them that his food was to do the will of God his Father. He also wanted to open their eyes and see that there was a spiritual harvest that they weren’t even aware of. Not only that but there was great wages to be earned by those who would get on with the work. In fact there’s another great truth here. When a person gets saved, it’s not necessarily the one who did all the hard work who gets to see it. Maybe there are some in your life who you often pray for and even witness to but they never seem to respond to you. Others will reap the harvest. We just need to be ready to reap when our turn comes. The disciples were preoccupied with other matters.
After Covid, and with all the horrible things happening in the world today, the harvest fields are ripe again. People need to hear and understand the Gospel and only we can explain it to them. But who is prepared to put their own wants aside and do the hard work! Maybe we can’t change the world but we could impact Papatoetoe.
John 4:39-42
And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans had come to Him, they urged Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. And many more believed because of His own word. Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.”
It's not about the right religion, it's not about the place being Jerusalem, Mecca, Mt Gerazim or anywhere else for that matter and it's not about the well. It's about Jesus.
But you've got to decide! Sychar is beneath the Mountain of Ebal but Jacobs Well is beneath Mt Gerizim. Are you going to go back to Sychar to live under a curse or are you going to come to Jacob's well to live under under God's blessing?
Satan picked you up and threw you down a dry well to die. But Jesus arrives at the well to rescue you and give you living water 😊
Come to the living water, come to the blessing, come to Jesus!
Do you remember exactly where you were when you first met Jesus? Maybe you haven't met him yet!
Right There at that well in Shechem was a reconciliation and peace. It's about Jesus. The Crossroads is where we meet him.
We saw at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics last week a tragedy of national and international proportions. The Last Supper is Jesus’s message to us of his body being broken for us and his blood poured out for our sin. The most basic starting point to us stepping out on the narrow path to Heaven is to recognise that we are sinners and that Christ died for us. The mockery of the Last Supper was a rejection of the Way Jesus offers. The message to the whole World from France was that living a life of pleasure and sin is salvation. Anything goes when it comes to “Love”. Jesus stands at the Crossroads. In my day, the old Sunday School song was
“I met Jesus at the Crossroads,
where the 2 ways meet.
Satan too was standing there and he said come this way.
Lots and lots of pleasures I will give to you today.
But I said No, there’s Jesus here
See what he offers me.
Down here my sins forgiven, up there a home in Heaven.
Praise God, that’s the way for me.”
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