22 Mar

3/24/19      John 4:5-42         “Wild Fire”

I think one of the biggest mistakes pastors sometimes make is that they make the Scripture readings too short.  What I mean is that we don’t read enough for the passage to make sense.  This is why I wanted to read this whole section of John today because it is all part of one story.  Often we will take parts of a story to make a point.  But today I would like to see what we can get from an overview of the whole story and how it applies to our lives.  This is a great passage with many nuances.

Darrel Davies tells the story of a young man named Ted Stallard and his teacher named Miss Thompson.  She was busy marking his paper wrong one day and couldn’t figure out why Ted was such a poor and seemingly lazy student.  If she had bothered to read his record, she would have found that he started school with a great attitude and learned well.  But in the 2^nd grade his mother got sick and she died while he was a 3^rd grader.  In the 4^th grade he could care less about school and his father was not interested in his school either.

Then came Miss Thompson and Christmastime in the 5^th grade.  She got presents from all her students.  She finally opened one that was carelessly wrapped in brown paper and scotch tape.  It was from Ted.  Out fell a gaudy rhinestone bracelet with ½ the stones missing and a bottle of cheap perfume.  All the other children snickered at this so she decided to wear the bracelet and splash on some of the perfume and let everyone smell it.  At the end of the day Ted stopped by and said, “Miss Thompson, you smell just like my mother and the bracelet looks real good on you too.  I’m glad you liked my presents.”  Then he left.

Miss Thompson knew she had done wrong and fell to her knees and prayed to God to help her understand her students better and to reach those hard to reach, especially the slow ones like Ted.  The next day the students came to class and found a reformed teacher.

Surprisingly, Ted started to do better.  Soon he wasn’t at the bottom of the class anymore.  After that year, she lost track of Ted for several years.  Then she got a note from him saying that he was graduating second in his class.  Four years later she got a note saying that he was graduating 1^st in his college class.  Four years later she got a letter saying that Theodore Stallard was now a doctor and was getting married.  He asked Miss Thompson if she would sit in the place at the wedding where his mother would sit if she were alive.  He went on to say that she was the only family he had left since his dad died last year.  It was an honor for her to do that.

The moral of this story is that you can’t be judging people by what they look like.  And that is how we begin in our Scripture reading today.  Jesus goes to Samaria and meets an immoral Samaritan woman.  First of all, the Jewish people hated the Samaritans.  This is because the Samaritans thought that they were the rightful descendants of Abraham and Moses and not the Jews.  They both had different ideas about basically the same religion.  It almost seems that religious wars in these times are like the ones today.  They start over pretty insignificant things.  But just because a religion is wrong doesn’t make the people in that religion bad or unfit for the love of Jesus.  I know it’s hard but we have to be more accepting of people but maybe not of their religions.

Anyway, women in those days were looked upon as second class citizens.  And on top of this she had been married 5 times and the man she was living with was not her husband.  So this poor woman was an outcast.  We know this because she was getting water close to midday.  The women always got their water early in the morning before the heat of the day came upon them.

I think that we need to understand that this woman was a broken person.  Nothing had worked for her.  All her marriages failed.  She had no standing even in her own community.  No one talked to her or even associated with her.  This woman was in the same place that Ted Stallard was at the beginning of his 5^th grade year.  She was broken with no friends and no place to turn.

I do believe that it is time that we take an inventory of the people around us.  We have immoral Samaritan people in our own midst.  They are the ones sitting in the bars every night.  They are the ones that do drugs all the time.  They are the ones that don’t have enough money.  They are the ones that dress in shabbily.  They are anyone you look down upon.  There is nothing wrong with these people that a good friend can’t fix.  I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this but people change for the better when they have a good friend.  Many times they only need to have someone come beside them and offer the living water.

That is exactly what Jesus did.  It didn’t matter to him because He was going to minister to her no matter what she had done.  Jesus doesn’t discriminate.  You cannot be too old or too young for Jesus.  You can’t be too big a sinner that He will turn away from you.  Most of the time people think they are too sinful and it is they who turn away from Jesus.  This is almost a universal response.  It is we who turn away from Jesus.  But He will never turn from you.  He loves you and that is the bottom line.  Jesus is always there!

And as Jesus speaks, this poor, broken woman who is on the verge of despair realizes who she is talking to.  She accepts Jesus for who he is and her heart is changed.  Here is another example of a changed life.  I like to talk about this a lot because the best evidence of Jesus in this world is changed lives.  She then forgets her water jug and runs to the town where she came from and she tells all the people who she has met.  She must have been excited.  She must have been exuberant.  She must have had a glow about her that only Jesus could have put on her.  We can assume this because she goes to the village where no one will have anything to do with her and they listen.  They listen to what she says and then they follow her back to Jesus.  This may be the first time that a gentile, in this case a Samaritan and a woman, evangelizes to other gentiles.  Jesus has come and made this woman’s life worthwhile again.

Jesus loves what we call miracles.  And remember what we call miracles are just in a day’s work for Jesus.  He works these things today also as we can see by all the changed lives in the world.  I just love it when I see someone who has just had Jesus come into their life and they are busy telling everyone they know about the miracle of their changed life.  We get just as excited today about Jesus living inside us as the Samaritan woman was in our story.  These things are exciting and I know many of you feel just as excited as I get when you see these things happen.

And I know that you also get excited, after having Jesus in your lives for many years, when you start to do a project or mission or some other thing that Jesus is directing.  I remember when we built the church out at rural Colfax.  Jesus was present as we could see so many things just fall into place that really shouldn’t have been possible.  I can feel the excitement when you do various things also.  I can feel the presence of Jesus as you are ministering to others.  As a matter of fact I feel the presence of Jesus right now in this church (on this broadcast) and it is making me want to shout out, “Praise the Lord.”  Do I hear an ‘Amen?’

And Jesus isn’t done yet. We see that the disciples come back and are wondering just what in the world is going on here.  They want to get that woman away from their master.  They can’t figure out why in the world Jesus would want to talk to her.  But they don’t dare say anything to him.  Jesus won’t let this happen and they would have been content to let this smolder in their minds.  This is a time when Satan can plant discontent.

We have touched a little on this in the past.  We let our prejudices get in our way of a relationship with Jesus.  You may ask, “Why in the world do I talk to that person?  Don’t I know that he/she is a homosexual?  Don’t I know that he/she has no moral values?  Don’t I know that he/she hates the Lord?”  Well, I do know who I’m talking to and that person may need a friend like our Samaritan woman or Ted Stallard in our opening story.  The next person you talk to may be on the verge of down and out or worse yet a breakdown.  They may not show it on the outside but they could be hurting in the most terrible way on the inside.  Talk to them!  Minister to them!

Many times we will be like the disciples and judge the book by its cover.  I have been in churches where they talk about ministry and they talk well.  But I found out that I had better not bring in some dirty, unworthy person to their worship.  They have ways to take me aside and tell me that they don’t do things this way.  They tell me that they will have church but they will not practice being Christ-like!  It is no wonder that Christians get the bad name of being hypocritical and snobbish.  We just have too many places that only talk the talk and don’t want to walk the walk.  I love it when I hear about how some of you are walking the walk.

“But Jesus isn’t done yet!”  Again.  I love to say that phrase.  So then He goes on to tell the disciples about the harvest.  The harvest is all over the place.  We have already talked about some of the places today.  If you think about it, there isn’t a place where we will not find the harvest ready.  We don’t have to wait until it is ripe because it is ripe already.  In many places others have gone before us and planted the seed.  Now the seed is ready for the harvest.

Jesus makes this very easy for us.  He gives us many gifts and we all have different gifts.  Some of us are good at planting seeds.  Some are good at nurturing seeds.  And some of us are good at harvesting the seeds.  There is a place in this formula for everyone.  No one is expected to do it all.  But you have to do your part.  Don’t be afraid to talk about Jesus like He is your best friend, because He is.  You don’t want to be hiding your candle under a bushel basket.

You don’t need to be apologizing about talking about Jesus either.  You don’t hear the Muslims apologizing about their faith.  You don’t hear the Mormons or the Jehovah’s Witness people apologizing about their faith.  You don’t hear the homosexuals or the abortionists apologizing.  None of these people have what we have because we have the truth and they don’t.  And the truth shall set you free just like it did to these Samaritans.  You are to stand up and be counted as a Christian!

The Scripture tells us that Jesus was invited to stay with the Samaritans for two days.  I would guess that the disciples did also but it doesn’t say.  When He did this many came to believe.  But the broken Samaritan woman led the way.  People came to see Jesus because of her.  And people came to believe that Jesus was the Savior because of what He did in their midst.

How ironic that the first group of converts to Jesus came from the Samaritans who were hated by the Jews.  Jesus went to this group to plant the seeds that the Jewish people wouldn’t accept.  And it was from these humble plantings or beginnings that this new religion, Christianity, would blossom and spread like a wild fire all over the Middle East and then the world.

It is the little things that make a difference.  In 1871, a woman in Chicago went to milk her cows.  She lit a lamp, the cow kicked over her lamp and the little flame ignited the hay which ignited the barn which ignited the neighbor’s houses which ignited the neighborhood.  Before it was over there was a swath 1 mile wide and 3 miles long of burnt destruction.  This all came from a little spark in a lamp.

I think that is what you are supposed to be doing.  No, I don’t mean burning down your neighborhoods with fire.  What I mean is that you are to be the spark of Jesus Christ where ever you go.  Hopefully you have been praying the prayer, “Holy Spirit empower me to give as Jesus did,” for the past few weeks.  I hope that this becomes a prayer that you pray all the time.  This could be a prayer of sparks.

I would like you to add a little more to your prayer.  Ask the Lord to place the name of someone on your heart who needs help or Jesus.  That’s all.  Keep praying this and see what happens.  God will put someone in your heart for you to minister to in a way that uses your gifts and glorifies God.  If the task seems to big, give me a call and I will help.

It is these little things that add up to a big wild fire for Jesus.  One of the great things about this passage today is that it gives us a full look at the love that Jesus has for you.  He will go anywhere and do what has to be done for you.  And in the process people see that He is the truth, the way and the life and that His Word will spread like a wild fire.  It is an honor for each of us to be a small part of this.  Even though your part may be small, the warm feelings you get from the love of Jesus will be enormous.  I praise the Lord that He loves you that much.  And thank you Jesus for first loving us. Let’s pray