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So, dear God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Lord, here we are on March 5th, 2017, and you are the eternal one who has spoken into our lives, changed us, opened our hearts for those of us whom you have given faith to believe. And I would pray, Father, that on this day, in our time, we might accomplish your good and perfect will, that our food, as Jesus said, would be to accomplish your will. So, Father, I ask you that you would give me a tongue to speak, that which you would have me say, and I pray that those that have been called to listen would be given ears to hear. that each individual might receive the miracle of a message from you, that you have desired to communicate with us. So how much more, Father, your own children who need direction, who need encouragement, and our prayers were certainly not in vain for those who have needed healing, and the things that they're facing in their lives. So, Father, meet us this morning. May it be a joyous time. May it be a time where we can receive from you, penetrate our culture, as you have with this beautiful word. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, I hit a milestone this last month, February. It was 40 years in prison ministry. I especially like that number because it's so biblical. There's a lot of 40s in the Bible. And I wanted to reach that. I think I shared last time, I don't know. I've had some struggle with blood pressure this last three months. I think we were here in November. And I think since then, I discovered that my blood pressure was off the charts. And you begin to notice different verses in the Bible when you're facing immortality. I mean, my blood pressure was very high. They've given me some medicine that's bringing it down. But it struck me that we don't live forever down here. And when you're faced with the reality that you could be leaving at any moment, You do pray differently. You do read the scriptures differently. And I was actually surprised how many verses there are on eternal life, because I was looking for those. And I thank the Lord that he let me reach that milestone personally. It's been an unusual exposure to prison ministry. Not only have I been able to do it on a personal basis, but that I've been able to train others throughout the years. When we were up in New England, we actually, I was given the task, if you can believe it, Making sure that the gospel was going into every single institution in New England. There's 150 plus of them. And to see that that goal was reached. And that the goal was not that I could do that, but that I would be used by God to encourage those ministries that already existed. but to find people to go into prisons and jails that had no ministry of the gospel. And to see that goal reached as long ago as 1986 was just sheerly the work of God. What was interesting about that work is that in all six New England states, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, is a wide variety of Christians. And we were looking for Gospel-believing, Bible-believing, Jesus-preaching, nostril-flaring Christians, sincere people who really believe that the Word of God is the Word of God. And to find that God enabled me to... He would just make the most of my trips. Way up to Maine, I'd have to spend a week up there, be away from home, because it was so far that to cover the jails up on the Northern Tier near Canada, you had to stay up there. To meet people, to interact with the institutions and find the believers nearby. That was my goal, to find local believers that were willing to go in at least once a week to preach the gospel. I was exposed to a whole gamut of Christianity. We are in a culture. We are in a Christian culture. And every church has its own culture. And I realized not only theologically, I was interacting with You can name the whole spectrum of genuine Christianity that I was exposed to. And what I had to learn was, is that what are the important things that unite us and what are the things that divide us? And I realized that the important thing was that they know Jesus Christ, that they've come face to face with realizing that These are individuals who are not born Christians. None of us is born a Christian. And to discover, that was the question I had, do they really know the Lord? And if they did, then I really didn't concern myself too much with the flavor of their particular denomination, as long as that they believe that this was the word of God from Genesis to the maps, and that Jesus Christ is the only way to be saved. That there is no other name given to us under heaven by which we must be saved. The name of Jesus is what we are about. Proclaiming him. But I wrote that book on prison ministry because the subtitle to it was Prison Ministry Understanding Prison Culture Inside and Out. Going into prison is like going into a foreign country. It has its own code of ethics, its own unspoken rules and regulations. And I'm just talking about the inmate population. The prison itself has its rules and regulations. And so for well-meaning, smiley-faced Christians like myself to come in with a handful of Bibles to think that we're just going to preach Christ without being aware of the dynamics of the culture that they live in was foolhardy. When we train people to go to China or to some other foreign nation, we immerse them in the language, we immerse them in the culture. Why do we do that? For those of you that read Hudson Taylor's life, he became more Chinese than he was English. He grew the long pigtail, he spoke their language. If we do that for a foreign nation, how much more so even to a culture where they speak our language more or less. although that's changing quite a bit, but have their own, that culture forces them to adapt to the culture that they're in. I describe culture as any group that meets with each other regularly on a regular basis and finds that this is the society which they are often in. Therefore, every group, be it large or small, has a culture. Every church has a culture. You have a culture that's very different. And I might add that yours is a very pleasant culture to enter. I enjoy being with you. My wife would say the same thing. There's a sincerity about Christ that's here, and a goodness about your lives that testifies to your sincerity. So I would think of this as a place where I would be happy to invite people. But to penetrate the culture that we're trying to penetrate, not only means that we have to understand the culture we're hoping to engage, but we also have to be aware of our own culture. What is it about our culture that could actually be a blind spot that hinders us from reaching the culture we hope to reach? Because there is. Every small group is not exempt from their own group think, their own way of looking at things. And because they all pretty much think the same, they hold up mirrors to each other saying, yep, we must be doing the right thing. You look the same as me. You think the same as me. We must be right in the way we view the world. But that's a culture. And we may have blind spots. When we think of God reaching us, this must have been the ultimate culture entry from heaven to earth. When God created man, he created him to be perfect. And the culture was perfect. Adam and Eve walked in the garden. They would have lived forever if they'd never sinned. So God created. But even then, they were still created physical beings. And God is spirit. Yet they could walk and talk with God. And then we sinned and we lost that fellowship with God and sin has dominated our lives and dominated this world. You can pick up any newspaper, listen to any news. The news is usually always bad, isn't it? If people want to question the doctrine of sin, just turn on any news media or the little devices that Gwen and I are trying to resist. But God came into this culture. And I'm going to be in the Gospel of John usually when I come. And let me explain why. Because I think of any book that can penetrate our culture of the Bible with the important facts and with an energy I refrain from calling it magic, but there is a magic about the Gospel of John when it comes to reaching people who are seeking. And so when I give a Bible to somebody, I usually earmark the Gospel of John and I say, start here. I did that just a few weeks ago with a correctional officer, a female, who, while I was talking to someone else, started reading my Bible. And I have the new international version, that's what I'll be speaking out of today. But I have the old NIV, not the new. It's like the new King James of the NIV. And she started reading it, and she said, her face lit up. She says, you know, I can understand this. She was exposed to a translation of the Bible, I don't know which one, but that she just could never understand. It just used a language that was difficult for her. And her culture was she didn't speak in that language. And so she, when I saw her eyes light up and I was actually talking to someone and she was turning pages. And so I always bring a paperback Bible into the jails and the prisons because I want to be able to leave giving it away. If anybody wants one, I can give it to them. And as I was leaving that night, I was able to give it to her and she was so amazed that I would give her my Bible. She went out and sat down with some other correctional staff, and I spoke a little bit longer to the person I was talking to. When I came out, in front of her friends, she is bent over like the image in James where the guy's just peering into the scriptures. She was actually bent over at the desk and reading in John where I had earmarked it. in front of five or six other correctional staff. And I left there rejoicing, thinking, you know, if she keeps reading, who knows what God will do? He energizes His Word. And so, The Gospel of John is a book to give to people who are seeking. Now, all scripture is inspired. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be reading any of the other books. But I'm saying if you want to break into a culture with a person who wants to know about God and really doesn't know where to start, I recommend starting in the Gospel of John. Gwen and I did a Bible study in our home every Wednesday night for 17 years. And out of that Bible study, many came to know the Lord. Two churches were started out of that group, and we only used one book of the Bible. John. John, I used to kid with him saying, I'm going to get you John'd-ist. Their exposure was always in the book of John. When they came to the end, they would say, well, let's read something else. And I would just start in John chapter 1 again, as a way of moving them on to a church. Many of them had joined churches by then. But if you want to engage the environment, the culture, I would say start a Bible study. What are we doing when we start a Bible study? We're bringing people who come from their own cultures and exposing them to the culture of the Lord. The Gospel of John will cause many questions to be asked, but you'll be confronted with the Lord Jesus Christ. So for 17 years, every Wednesday night, I taught the Gospel of John. When I disciple an individual, meet one-on-one with a man, I take him through the Gospel of John. It usually takes us two years. And so to say that I'm familiar with this book would be, I think I can at least say that I'm very familiar with this book. But I'm learning some things about it every single time I go through. I go to two prisons right now, Chester County Jail and Delaware County Jail, and occasionally the prison at Chester. And in both county jails, guess which book I'm preaching of? Because I go right onto the tier where the inmates are. They can't come to a chapel service, so someone has to go to them. And so with other inmates listening in their cells, usually a group will meet at a table or whatever the situation is, and I'll preach the Gospel of John. Think of the verses that they hear. Even those guys sitting in their cells. And your words just echo in their place, kind of like this. You hear everything. But think of those verses. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. What must we do to do the works God requires? Believe in the one he has sent is the work that God requires. And so many more. He who believes in me has eternal life. He has crossed over from death to life, John 5, 24. And what is one of our favorite? For God so loved the world that he penetrated this culture by sending his only son, Jesus Christ. And yet it's not easy, it's not difficult to see that there's a hostility to that name, isn't there? There's a hostility to the name of Jesus like there is no other name. When's the last time you heard someone hit their thumb with a hammer and go, oh, Mohammed? You don't hear that. When's the last time someone wants to swear and they go, oh, Buddha? No, when someone wants to blaspheme God, even the unbelievers pick the one name that satisfies blasphemy unbeknownst to them. Why do they pick the name of Jesus to swear? Did you ever think of that? Because if they're all the same, if they're all a figment of everybody's imagination, why are you swearing in the name of Jesus? Why wouldn't you swear in the name of Muhammad? Unless you didn't want to get your head cut off. or the name of Buddha, or Confucius, or anything else. Am I right or am I wrong? There's something about that name. When people want to get angry at God, when they want to swear, they use the name of Jesus. And yet there is no greater name that is more precious to a Christian than the name of Jesus. When you hear them swearing in the name of Jesus, doesn't it bother you? Doesn't bother you? Nothing bothers us more than hearing his name being misused, because he is now precious to us. Turn to the first chapter of the Gospel of John. We're actually not going to be there, but I want us to see what God did. John opens with this little prelude, and we're not going to spend a lot of time here, but I want us to see how he lays the table. Verse 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made that has been made." At this juncture all we know is that this Word who was with God is God and made everything. And we also know that the word became flesh and dwelt for a while among us. John sets up the table for his 21 chapters with the reality that this Jesus, who he's going to talk about for 21 chapters, who the disciple John is going to remember as he walked beside him, the gospel writer wants us to know that this was God in flesh. This Jesus, whom people swear, deny, don't want to hear about, is God in flesh. God. For God so loved the world, that's his motive for sending him, that he gave his only son, that whoever, are you a whoever? Whoever believes in him, shall not perish, but have eternal life. I had a man come to my Bible study two weeks ago at Delaware County. He was brought by a friend and he came with a very heavy countenance. And his friend said, ask him what you asked me up on the tier. And he said, can God forgive me for what I've done? And I don't know what he's done. I never asked that question. Sometimes you find out, but that's not why I'm there. But my answer to him is that there's only one sin that God can't forgive. The Bible refers to it as the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. But when you investigate that, the Holy Spirit points to Jesus Christ, convicts the world of sin, and points them to the only way they can be saved. The blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, in the end, is rejecting Jesus Christ as Savior. That's universal. I don't care what nation you're from, what color you are, what creed you have, how many stripes you have against you, how many letters you have over your name. Jesus is the only name that can save us. And so what is the only sin that can condemn us forever? Shutting the door on our own forgiveness. When Jesus Christ hung on the cross and shed his blood, he was paying for the sins of whoever would believe. But if man refuses to come to Jesus, they will pay for their sins. And I didn't have to know that man's sin, but I could assure him that if you have faith in Jesus Christ, he died for you at the cross, was buried, and rose again on the third day to prove he really was God in flesh. I pray that that man comes to know him, but that's the only answer. I don't care what anybody here in this room has done. If you are sorry for your sins, God penetrated this culture to say, I'm sending my son to take your place. God can't die, but when God became a man, that man could die. It's the only way our sins can be forgiven. Notice what it says in the next verse four, in him the word This God in flesh was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness. God was here. Light is often used as our intelligence, our understanding. Light was now into a world that had gone dark. But it says that the darkness has not understood it, not comprehended it. Verse 10 says, he was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which he had created, his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who receive him, to those who believe in his name, the name of Jesus, he gives the authority, the right to become children of God. If you never heard that before, you heard it here today, but I'm sure any Christian will tell you that. that God so loved the world that he sent his son Jesus Christ to die for you. That's my job in prison. But there's a culture that has to be penetrated there. What is our job? Our job is bringing the reality of God and his message into the lives of other people, isn't it? Isn't that our job? I've often gone cell to cell, and over the last few years, I found myself more and more, especially if I'm going into a unit where the person just showed up in prison, they're scared, they're afraid, some of them are suicidal, some of them are still high, whatever their situation is, How do you get into that person's culture when he or she is experiencing all of these emotions and all of these things? Well, I know, for example, in the intake units, that's where they put you when you first come in. They have to find out if you have any diseases that could be transferred to the other prisoners. You have to learn what's going on. They have to find out if you have any gang affiliations, do you have any enemies. So there's a lot that goes on in that first couple weeks where the first timer in prison is going through a lot of pain. They didn't just decide to pack their luggage and go to jail, their life was usually interrupted. And so there they are, not where they want to be and not with the people they want to be with. That's one of the two greatest pains in prison, is not being with the people you love when you want to be with them. The other pain is just the loss of your freedom. Loss is a word that defines people in prison. Loss of reputation, loss of freedom, loss of being with the people that you love, loss of self-esteem. You can't stand up and say, hey world, I'm doing fine. So what do you say? What is your introductory statement? When I come to a man's cell, and if I'm in the women's unit, I'll say the same thing. Here they are hurting. Some of them very angry. And here you are, the smiley face Christian. And I'll introduce myself as a smiley face Christian. I'll even use that phrase sometimes. Why? Because everybody in prison has a reason for being there. I have to have a reason for being there. And no one just waltzes into the cell area and shows up at their door. So they know you've got to be somebody. You're the correctional officer, a doctor if you're in the infirmary, a counselor, some reason. But here's these strange people with no uniform coming through with a big smiley face and a handful of Bibles. And so I just identify myself, it's obvious who I am, I'm a Christian. But my next word is often this to them, increasingly over the last few years. There they are in their hurt, their loneliness, their anger, their pain, and along comes a person at their door and he says this to them, God has not forgotten you, that's why I'm here this morning. I'm here to tell you that God has not forgotten you. And I can't tell you how often even the toughest exteriors break down in tears. Because that's the last thing they were expecting. And that's the last thing they thought God was thinking about them no matter what their concept of God is. That he's not close to them now, he's obviously a very bad person. That's what people on the outside think are in prison, bad people. We have to break into the culture out here where they think they're good. But at least people in prison know that they've messed up. So what did I just do? I entered a culture. I don't know what their history is, and I'll find that out in the next half hour, hour. I'll ask them a lot of questions. Because our job is not so much to preach at them before we know what their situation is. We need to listen. God gave us two of these. And only one of these, which means I ought to listen twice as much as I speak. You know, when I was a younger Christian, I used to blast away with a shotgun, hoping one pellet of evangelism would hit him. But now God has told me to listen to where people are at. Care for them. I was a very young man, just started in prison ministry probably the first six months. And I came across a man in a cell, the prison I was going into there, I was assigned to the awaiting trial unit. These guys hadn't even been to trial. And there was one guy that had come in, and I had read about him in the newspaper. He had committed a horrendous act on an individual. on a girl, and I found myself angry just reading it. It never dawned on me, because I was so new to this, that I'd actually meet this person that I was reading about. And when I got to his cell, I found him reading the newspaper with his feet up on the sink as though he didn't have a care in the world. And that angered me even more. Don't you realize what you did? And so I had to walk past him, and I spoke to some other guys that I knew about. I knew ahead of time what he had done, and I'd already formed an opinion of him. So I realized, well, I'm a Christian, and I know the gospel goes to everyone. I'm going to go back and tell him the gospel. And I remember coming to his cell door, and he was still in that same position. Laying back on his bunk with his feet up just reading the paper and there was a girl bleeding in the hospital for what he had done. Could have lost her life, 14 years old. Stabbed her several times and left her in the woods in the middle of winter to die. And here he is reading the newspaper in his heated cell with his feet up on the sink. And I was about to go in and share the gospel with him because I'm a Christian. And God stopped me cold at the door. And he said to me very loudly and very clearly, you don't care two cents about this guy. I don't want you talking to him. And I went home wrestling with this because I'd only been doing this two or three months. And I went home saying, Lord, what am I supposed to do? I can't preach to inmates and be hating them at the same time. And you say, of course, that's a no-brainer. But what was I going to do? And God convicted me that unless I care about them, then it's a facade. It's for me that I'm going in. I don't really care about them. When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them. That's what Jesus sees. And I thank the Lord that for the last 40 years, that's what I see. I never had that experience again. And I've met people who did far worse than he did. There isn't a prison yard in this country that you can't put me on, that I don't have this sense of overwhelming compassion that comes out of my heart for these dear, dear people. I have fellow Christians who get mad at me for referring to them as dear people because they still have the feeling and the thoughts that I had as that young man. I could mention names, I could mention categories of crime, that there will be definitely people in this room who say, how can you go talk to them? I've had correctional officers tell me that. How can you go talk to this particular group of people? And I say they need Jesus just as much as you do. And I don't pass a correctional staff without trying to talk to them about Jesus. Because I don't see uniforms. I don't see colors. All the inmates have different colors depending on what unit they're in. I see people in need of Jesus Christ. Have you ever sat in the mall or someplace where a lot of people congregate and realized that most of the people you're watching don't know Jesus? And has it ever struck you that it's like people rowing a canoe off a falls? to see people as Jesus sees them. How do we break into that culture? The first thing we gotta do is understand our own culture. What is it that blinds us? What is it that keeps us from running up to everybody and saying, you need Jesus? We're gonna be in the fourth chapter of John, looking at the woman at the well, but we're actually not gonna look at her story. John chapter four is this delightful encounter of Jesus with this woman, who had a sinful reputation in the town that she came from. Very small town. You know how it is in a small town? It's like being in a city in the neighborhood. Everybody knows everybody's business. This woman is going to the well at noon time, when the normal time to go to the well is in the evening, and they still do that in many cultures. They don't have running water in many, many cultures, and so the women have to go to a well with jars on either their heads or their shoulders, and this woman was no different. But the difference between this woman and other women is that this woman went to the well at high noon. Nobody goes to the well at high noon. John tells us it was a six hour, that means 12 o'clock. Why didn't she go with the rest of the women? Because she had a bad reputation in that town. She'd had five husbands and was shacking up with someone at the time that Jesus met her. And it says here in verse four, chapter four, verse four. Jesus had to go through Samaria. That word for he had is a very strong word in the Greek. It means it was necessary for him. It was binding. It was proper for him to go. It's a strong word. But he didn't have to go through Samaria. In fact, most Jewish teachers avoided Samaria. I think Shad mentioned that Samaria was in the middle between Galilee and Judea. So it did make sense that Jesus had to go through, if he's leaving Judea, going to Galilee, he must go through this area called Samaria. But that's not what the Jewish leaders did. The Jewish, fine upstanding Jewish teachers actually crossed the river Jordan. Here's Samaria, here's Judea, here's Galilee. Actually, the river Jordan is like the boundary on the right. They would actually cross the river go up through the desert on the other side and cross the river again to go into Galilee because they didn't want to dirty their shoes by going through Samaria. They didn't like Samaritans because they weren't like them. They had been assimilated by other cultures. When the ten northern tribes were invaded, the invaders had a way of taking the people out of their area and putting them somewhere else and putting people from somewhere else into that area. And so over time what you have is people who didn't have the Jewish customs They had their own religions mixed in with the Jews and their teachings. And so they have a false distorted image of what God really said. But the Jews, especially the Jewish leaders, wouldn't go through Samaria because they didn't like Samaritans. There was an animosity between them. But it says here in verse 4, Jesus had to go through Samaria. That would be like leaving gap To go to Lancaster, if you wanted to go the fastest way from Gap to Lancaster, you'd shoot straight down Route 30, wouldn't you? Go west, right? This would be like if you had to go from Gap to Lancaster, you'd have to go through Kinzers if you wanted to go the shortest, quickest way, right? What the Jews were doing is they were leaving Gap and going to Ephrata to get to Lancaster because they didn't want to dirty their shoes with the people that lived in Kinzers. That's how ridiculous this was. Jesus is not bound by political correctness, not even religious political correctness. He had to go through Samaria, so he came to a town, verse 5, in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph, that's using Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that Jacob. He gave it to his son Joseph, the one who was locked up in prison in Egypt. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, verse six, tired as he was from the journey, God in flesh can become tired and hungry. Jesus was tired and hungry. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the six hour. When a Samaritan woman, that's 12 o'clock, high noon, when a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, will you give me a drink? His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, you are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman, how can you ask me for a drink, and here it is clear as day, for Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. One of the themes of John, one of the themes of the Gospel of John, is that God is at work penetrating cultures. And he uses what's going on in that person's culture to reach them. In chapter three, the one just before this, Nicodemus comes to him at night, because he's a Pharisee, a religious leader, and he doesn't want his buddies to see him. I call him Nick at night. And he comes and he says, hey, we need to know about you. You're doing miracles. And Jesus gets right to the point and says, you know what, Nick? You need to be born again. born again. He's taking the fact that Nicodemus was born physically and he's trying to insert the spiritual reality that you've got to be born again. This woman comes to the well to draw what? Water. So what does he say to her? In verse 10, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. We're not gonna get into the conversation. Maybe we will in the future. I saw that part of that conversation is right here, John 4, 13. Jesus said, whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. She came for the water and Jesus introduces living water. He's reaching her where she, in her routine, in her life. And it's an interesting study, perhaps we'll do it, what happens between them. In the fifth chapter, he's going to meet a paralyzed man. He's going to ask him, do you want to get well? Asking a paralyzed man, do you want to get well? And he heals him. In chapter six, he heals, he feeds 5,000 people. And then he says, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never be hungry. He tells the woman caught in adultery, chapter 8. Has anyone condemned you? They wanted to kill her. Remember how he said, let the one who is without sin throw the first stone at her. What a great line. And I noticed that it was the older people that left first. I would have been one of them. Uh-oh, I see where this is going. And then when he was all alone with this woman caught in adultery, he said, neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. Taking her from the physical reality to the spiritual, go and sin no more. Chapter nine, the blind man. Man was blind and now he sees. So Jesus is constantly trying to insert spiritual reality by using the things of where people are at. That's why when I come to a man or woman's soul, I say, God has not forgotten you. They're hurting, and what have I done? I've inserted God's reality into their life. But what about the disciples? Is it only people who don't know Jesus Christ who have to have their culture penetrated? Think about that. Does the teaching continue? Is it only people who don't believe in Jesus that needs to have their culture penetrated? Look at the disciples. Let's pick up in verse 25. He gets the woman in their conversation to the point where she says, I know that Messiah called Christ is coming, and when he comes, he will explain everything to us. So in her distorted theology was that when this person, the Messiah comes, the Christ comes, he will explain everything to us. They've been having a dialogue, and it sounded like he said, she said for a while. And then Jesus clearly says to her, I who speak to you am he. You will be hard pressed. to find any other place in the New Testament where Jesus so clearly declares who he is than he does to this sinful woman who is not named, in a small town where archaeologists probably haven't rediscovered, than he makes to this poor woman. And look what her reaction is. We don't get it immediately. The disciples return just then. So now what I call the people that hang around Jesus have come on the scene. And what are they witnessing? The moment of this girl's conversion. The moment of realizing that though she's had five husbands and is living with a guy now, Jesus offers her forgiveness if she's willing to take it. I know this woman's name, by the way. And I might tell it to you next month. I actually know this woman. You say, how that can be? I'll tell you. Just then, though, at the point of her conversion, the disciples returned. Now think about this. Upstanding Jewish leaders don't talk to Samaritans. Upstanding Jewish leaders don't talk to women, let alone Samaritans, much more Samaritan women. And there's now a natural prejudice between Jews and Samaritans. Where had the disciples been when Jesus was talking to the woman? Where were they? They were downtown at the local deli. Think of this. It's noontime. They're hungry. They want to eat. Jesus stays at the well. I don't know whether he chose to stay there or whether they said, you know, leave him at the well because don't bring him into town. He'll start talking to everybody. They want to eat. It's time for McNuggets or McMotsables, whatever it is they eat. So think of this, 12 Jewish guys walk into the little town of Sychar, Jewish guys in a little Samaritan village, they walk into the local deli, they order 12, no 13 meals, happy meals, whatever it is, and they walk out and it's Oh yeah, did you see those 12 Jewish guys? I'm telling you, they had it made. They could have said anything. This would have been an uproar. This could have started a riot. 12 Jewish guys in a local deli in Sychar, and it's all Samaritans. And they didn't get so much as a single response. Think of that. Nobody followed them out of town. They didn't use the opportunity to say, we just left the Messiah up on the hill by a well. They didn't even say that, obviously. How is it that 12 guys who hang around Jesus could not impact a culture when it was so obvious they weren't part of that culture? They didn't even have to open their mouth and they could have started a conversation going. Am I right or am I wrong? That would be like you walking into a town or an area of town that is totally not like you, 12 of you, and just hanging out on the street corner. You don't think something's gonna happen? You don't think some conversations are gonna ensue? Of course they will. 12 people who knew Jesus and hung around with him couldn't get a rise out of a single person in town. A single woman who'd had five husbands and was shacking up with someone who was low on the totem pole in that town because she had to go to the well by herself. The women didn't include her at night. She gets the whole town out. Look at that. Go back and look at verse, well, we haven't looked at it yet. Look at verse, 28. Then leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ? They came out of the town and made their way toward him. 12 people that hang around with Jesus couldn't get anybody out of town. A woman that everybody knew in town who had a bad reputation gets the whole town out. Why? Because I don't think she went back into town going to every neighbor. Sorry to bother you, but this guy up on the hill there that I just met, do you think that's the way she approached him? Do you picture her that way? What did she leave at the well? Her water jar. I love the fact that John includes that. It says, then leaving her water jar, She went back into town. I think this woman is psyched. I think she's overjoyed. There is forgiveness for her. And she doesn't care what people think of her. That's why Christians are so obnoxious when they first become Christians, isn't it? They got to tell everybody about Jesus. Oh, that we could keep that excitement. How many of you had Christian friends before you were Christians and they were just obnoxious? Oh, you got to know Jesus. Get away from me. But why? Why can't they contain themselves? Because they've been forgiven. They've been touched by the love of God. You can't hold us back now. So she wakes up the whole town. They're probably taking a siesta. She doesn't care. She doesn't care that, oh, they think, what did they think of her? She gets them, you've got to come see this guy who told everything about me. She gets them curious enough to come up out of the hill. What are the disciples focused on? Look at verse 31. Don't forget, they just observed this conversion experience. Verse 31, Rabbi, eat something. Why? Because the fries are getting cold. They're hungry. They want to eat. Jesus is always, oh no, I thought we left him here at the well by himself. He's talking to a woman. But no one said anything? No one asked, why are you talking to her? Now, I had an inmate tell me, well, it must be because he's Jesus. You don't question what he's doing. I had never thought about that. I learned more from the prisoners, often, over the years. And I had never entertained that. But I kind of still think that there they are with their happy meal getting cold. And Jesus is talking to somebody. And she runs off. OK, here's our chance. Rather than saying, hey, what just went on here? They said, Rabbi, eat something. So where's their focus? Their focus is on the routine of life. They really didn't see Samaria as a target for the gospel or the Samaritans living there. And brothers and sisters, I think we can do the same thing. In our minds, unconsciously, we can think that certain people are just not targeted for the gospel. When in reality, Jesus saw the crowds and he had compassion on them. We ought to be able to look at anybody and say, you need the Lord. You need the Lord. We all need forgiveness. We all need forgiveness. There's no one exempt. And who's the ones carrying this beautiful message? He's training 12 men that as you are going, make disciples. It's going to be the last thing he says as he ascends into heaven. Go ye therefore into all the world and make disciples. And the translation is really, as you are going, as you are going through life, make disciples. Tell people about Jesus. But don't just clobber them with the Bible. What's going on in their life? Enter their world where they're at. The woman came for water and she wound up with living water. Nicodemus got born again. Not immediately, but we see him in the seventh chapter questioning his buddies saying, hey, do we condemn a guy even without giving him a hearing? By the 19th chapter, he's with Joseph of Arimathea taking Jesus' body down from the cross. Nicodemus got saved. For him, it was a journey, having to break from his peers who would look down on him and throw him out. Brothers and sisters, you have the life preserver. You can't save a soul. I never saved a single person. I can only tell them, come see a man who will forgive your sins. There's no other name. No other name. No one else is God in flesh. But the disciples needed a lesson here, that no one is exempt from the gospel. It's not as though we're going to Lancaster to share the gospel. There are people in Kinzers that need the gospel. Wherever we are, there are people that need the gospel. The next thing they do is what I would call the four more months syndrome. I see that down in verse, first of all, in verse 33. Verse 32, Jesus says, I have food to eat that you know nothing about. Remember how they said, Rabbi, eat something. He's hungry and thirsty. We know that. And when they tried to urge him to eat the physical food, he says, I've got food to eat that you know nothing about. What was it? It was that someone was coming to be saved. And then they said, they still don't get it right away. Could someone have brought him a Twinkie? That's what they basically paraphrased in verse 33. Then his disciples said to each other, could someone have brought him food? They're still thinking of the routine of their life. They're still thinking physically. We thought it was unbelievers who had to have the physical penetrated with the spiritual. Brothers and sisters, sometimes it's the church. We can get so locked into our routine that we forget what the heart of the gospel is. When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them. It's looking at people for who they are, not as targets. They just need Jesus. There isn't a single person I could look at that, if they don't know Jesus, doesn't need him. Sometimes I used to bring a lot of Bibles in and people would say, aren't you worried that someone's going to steal them? I say, anybody that would steal a Bible needs one. I'm happy to have them steal it. That's what they needed to hear. Jesus says, verse 34, my food, that which nourishes me is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. There are believers here in this room who have known the Lord a long time. Is there anything more exciting than having a conversation with someone about the Lord? that's really wanting to hear it? I'm asking a genuine question. Is there anything more exciting to you as a Christian than having a conversation with someone who doesn't yet know the Lord but is responding to what you're saying? I was actually locked in a prison cell because a guy was becoming almost at the point of conversion. I still remember his name, Mike DiCicco, up in Billerica, Massachusetts, and I knew him for years afterwards. In those days, you could go into a prisoner cell during their open times. They could go out in the yard or their cell doors would be open and they could play cards at the tables in the middle of the tier. And so this was a kind of a rec time. So there was no place to sit in the corridor, so I went in and I sat on his bed while he gave me the bed, he sat on the toilet. And so I'm sharing the gospel with him, and he's getting close to receiving Christ. It was his time. He was just getting it. Young man, probably 20, 21 years old. And I didn't notice that it was three o'clock. And what happened in that prison at three o'clock is that the officers changed shifts. And so the officers that knew I was down there in this guy's cell went home. And a new shift came on, and they don't know that there's a guy down there in this guy's cell. And the rec time is over when the shift changes, so all the doors shut. Now, I was conscious that the door was closing. But he was so close to receiving Christ, it's like, not important. And we finished up. And he joyfully prayed to receive Christ. And then after we, you know, we went over some things in the Bible, and he was just so excited about that his sins could be forgiven. Then it finally dawned on him and me, I'm locked in this cell. And the guards don't know I'm down here. And so they have a way of alerting the officers. They turn around there. If you don't have bars, you have these long steel doors with a slot in the middle. And so you turn around and you bang the steel door against the frame. And that gets everybody's attention. So the officers know when they hear bang, bang, bang, that they want you. Well, they ignore them 90% of the time. So they didn't come for I don't know how long. Finally, he said, what do you want, DiCicco? They yelled that from the officer's area. He says, well, I think you ought to know that I have a civilian locked in my cell with me. One officer came running down there. Now think about this. He was one of the very few Christian officers in that place on either ship. Who does God send down? A Christian officer. So what does he do when he gets there? He looks and he says, oh, it's you, Lenny. Let me know when you get saved. And he turned around on his heels and walked away. Let me know when you get saved. And so Mike DiCicco goes, he looks at me, that's what I am, right? He says, yeah, I already am saved. So the officer came back down, verified whether he would really become a Christian. My whole point was this. We have food to eat that the world knows nothing about. Is there anything more exciting than telling people about Jesus and that their sins can be forgiven? Is there anybody in this room today who's not been forgiven? What greater news could you hear than Jesus died for your sins? What do I have to do? Put your trust in him. Don't I have to knock on a bunch of doors? No. You might want to, just like this lady did as soon as she was converted. Do I have to be in church every Sunday? No, but you'll want to be with the Christians who love Jesus just like you do. Those things don't save us. Those things don't save us. Simple faith in Jesus Christ that he loved you so much, he took your place at the cross. Jesus shed his blood. You say, well, that was 2,000 years ago. That's an old, old story. That is still the only story. That is still the only way we can be saved. The disciples needed to be trained. It isn't until the 16th chapter that they finally get it. And that's good, because it was the night before Jesus died. Sometimes it takes a while for us to get it. I would ask this question. He says, and I'll close with this. He says, you guys say, don't you say four more months and then the harvest? That's what he says here. Verse 35. Do you not say four months more and then the harvest? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields. They are ripe for harvest. What do you think he was pointing at? The fields? This is probably June. He says, now this is an agricultural society. They plant. They'll be planting here soon. You're in an agricultural society. They'll be planting pretty soon. But it's not until September or October that the harvest comes in. So it's natural, as Jesus said, for you to say, well, you're saying right now, you've got four or five more months before the harvest comes in. Jesus said, I'm telling you that the harvest is ripe right now. What do you think he was pointing at if he was pointing at something? The people coming out of the town on the word of the sinful woman. Jesus said, you know, you're looking at the physical. You're looking at the fields of corn or barley. I'm telling you, here's the harvest. And as he's saying it, up the hill comes a whole town of people. I want to hear about Jesus. This woman is so excited that we had to come and see what she's talking about. Oh, may we never lose the excitement of being young Christians. that your sins are forgiven. We ought to have that joy every morning because our sins are forgiven every day. That was one of the things that Jesus complained about one of the churches in Revelation. You've lost your first love. I say open our eyes. I think it's sometimes the people that you least think are ready are the people that are ready. because you can't gauge how a person and how the spirit is working in their life from the outside. I just say keep throwing the preserver, keep meeting them where they're at. I've had guys at their cell tell me as I walk by, this is hell, as though there is no spiritual hell. That's what they say. I'm in hell. I use that as an opportunity. That's what he's thinking. I go back to his cell and I say, you ain't seen nothing yet. That might sound cruel, but I need to break through that thinking. He's thinking, and I remember thinking it when I was in jail. I was locked up several times, and I can remember thinking when I was in, well, this makes up for all the times I didn't get caught. That's inmate thinking. Now we're even, as though that does it. He's thinking, I'm in hell. No. Just as there is a physical hell, there's a spiritual hell. I say, that next hell, no parole, no getting out. Pain, torture, separation, darkness, fire for the rest of eternity. You say, well, that's cold. Is it the truth? It's the truth. Unless Jesus Christ takes the penalty for their sins, they will pay for it. So I take the opportunity of even a man who tells me he's in hell to say, no, this is not hell. But you know what? This hurts. And the next thing that's coming hurts even more. But God has offered you a parole, a pardon. Do you want to be pardoned? The Lord will abundantly pardon, the scriptures say. So I guess my summary of what I want to say today is, Understand the culture of the person that you're talking to, what is important to him or her, but also understand and make an assessment, what is it about our culture that makes me blinded to the hurting people around me? And I would say that's just as important. You have a delightful culture here. I would love for people to join you. I really mean that with all my heart. You love the Lord. People should be here. And I'm not saying that you're not doing what you can. I'm just saying we all have blind spots. We all are heading for Galilee thinking Samaria is not a target, when in fact there are people in our lives who are targets.
The Culture Penetrating Power of the Gospel
Sermon ID | 73181324410 |
Duration | 56:12 |
Date | |
Category | Sunday Service |
Bible Text | John 4:1-42 |
Language | English |
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