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Unexpected,
Untrained, Yet Effective Evangelist
Exodus 17:1-7; John
4:5-42
February 27,2005 Third Sunday of Lent
The Rev. Kong Namkung
Jesus and Satan have an argument as to who is the better computer programmer. This goes on for a few hours until they agree to hold a contest with God as the judge. They set themselves before their computers and begin. They type furiously for several hours, lines of code streaming up on the screen. Seconds before the end of the competition, a bolt of lighting strikes, and takes out the electricity. Moments later, the power is restored, and God announces that the contest is over. God asks Satan to show what he has come up with. Satan is visibly upset, and cries, “I have nothing! I lost it all when power went out.” “Very well, then let us see if Jesus fared any better.” Says God. Jesus enters a command and the screen comes to life in vivid display, the voices of an angelic choir pour forth from the speakers, Satan is astonished. He stutters, “But how? I lost everything. Yet Jesus’ program is intact! How did he do it?” God chuckles, “Jesus saves.”
“Jesus saves!” With this slogan American missionaries went out to proclaim Jesus Christ to many different countries. Since I came to this country, I have been to many major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Washington Dc, and many others. What I have found from my trips is that the ethnic population is growing. For example, in New York there are many Jews and their descendents, In Washington DC there are many Koreans, in Chicago there are many polish people. In other major cities there are many Chinese with Chinese food and Mexicans.
Most of these immigrants are Christians. Some of them join established churches here, others, form new congregations. The missionaries our American churches sent to Africa, Asia and Latin American were successful beyond their imagination. Those who hear their preaching are now coming to the Untied States and starting or joining churches here. These immigrants bring with them true evangelistic zeal, sparked by the phenomenal growth of churches in this country and in their own counties.
According to David Barrett, a statistician, specializing in churches, in Africa Christian population rose from 8 million in 1900 to 285 million in 1993. He estimates that the number of African Christians will reach 760 million by 2025. According to a study, by 2010 the majority of Catholics in the United States will be of Hispanic descent.
Generally speaking, when 3 French get together, they talk about food and how to cook delicious food. When 3 Chinese get together, they talk about how to open a restaurant. When 3 Japanese get together, they talk about how to make money. When 3 Germans get together, they talk about the true meaning of life. When 3 Koreans get together, they talk about how they can open a church. Korean churches are popping up all over this country. There are 12 Korean churches in found in the Fayetteville telephone directory. Ethnic congregations are performing one baptism for 10 members in this country while white congregations are performing one baptism for every 40 members.
What is happening here? Why are we sending missionaries overseas when we are not evangelizing in our own neighborhoods? We would ridicule a married man who helps others families all that he can while he neglects to take care of his own family. Why are we leaving the work of evangelizing the first world for the so –called ‘Third world?”
Today’s scripture lesson tells us that the Samaritan woman reaches out to her neighbors, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done.” After she met Jesus, after she experienced Jesus, and after she believed in Jesus, the woman at the well went in to the village and told people about Jesus. She was reaching out to the people in her own city with the gospel of Christ Jesus.
Who was that woman? The woman, who shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with her neighbors, was an invisible woman. The woman at the well was invisible woman to the Jews because she was a Samaritan. Her nationality made her invisible. She was also invisible because she lived a wrong life, morally and ethically. This woman had secrets that most people did not want to hear about. She had five husbands and she was living with another man. I am sure that the people in the city knew about her life and talked behind her back. The five men’s family members, their relatives, and their friends spoke ill of her always. She might have been excluded by everyone in the town.
The women in Israel came to a well early in the morning or around sun set. (Genesis 24: 15- 34, 29:4-12) However, I imagine this woman might wake up around 11:00 am, had brunch and came to well expecting no one would be there.
To this invisible woman Jesus could choose not to engage her, or Jesus could choose to become hostile, or Jesus could to show the animosity that was so common between Jews and Samaritans. If Jesus chose one of these, she would have been an invisible woman forever.
Instead Jesus came to meet her and said to her, “Woman, give me a drink.”
As she was talking to Jesus, her understanding of Jesus changed. In verse 9 the Samaritan woman said to Jesus, “How is it that you, a Jew ask a drink of me?” At the beginning she understood Jesus as a normal Jewish man. For her Jesus was not a special person at all. Jesus was nobody for her.
As Jesus said that he could give her living water, she said in verse 11, “Sir, you have no bucket and the well is deep, where do you get the living water?” She began to show her respect to Jesus because she wanted to have the living water without coming back to well to get water. Then she said, “Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob?” in verse 12. She compared Jesus with her ancestor Jacob, which implies Jesus could be a historical figure.
Verse 19, she said, “I see that you are a prophet.” Finally, she said in verse 25, “I know that the Messiah is coming.” She reached to the point where she understood Jesus as the Messiah and where Jesus wanted her to be. After the right understanding of Jesus as the Messiah, what did she do?
The woman left her jar and went back to the town and said, “Come and see the man who told me everything that I have ever done.” Verse 39
There are many invisible people, who have an undesirable or unthinkable past, in our town. Maybe you are one of them. Other people may not see you and your importance because of who you are, what you are, where your social status lies. You may feel that nobody knows you, you feel that you are alone, or none respect you, or you do not want to be seen because of sins that you have sinned against God and others. You are seeking the living water because what you drink never quenches your thirst.
If you are in this situation, today I want to invite you to come to Jesus. Jesus wants you to come to Him so that you may become a visible person in Him and find meaningful life, and find the purpose of life in Jesus Christ.
I was an invisible man once. There were many days in my life- drinking and smoking all night long, waking up about 11 O’clock in the morning and beginning my day without Jesus Christ. Now I am not an invisible man any longer, I drink the living water every day.
You may say that you are not an invisible person any longer, you have met Jesus, who came to the visible, but you still have your jar with you and wherever you go, you always carry it with you. The woman, at the well after she had met Jesus, left her jar behind her. The jar that you carry might be your power, possession, or pleasure.
When I was in Raleigh, I went to a nice restaurant. The people, who sat beside me, talked to each other about how they could get a good promotion by using other people and did not pray when they had a meal, at the end of their meal, one of them said, “See you later brother.” A few days later I met them at a Christian gathering. What I am saying is that since we had met this blessed savior, we cannot carry our jar with us. The woman left the jar where she had met Jesus. Too many of God’s people are holding back, trying to stay invisible, because we think we have secrets that will disqualify us from the work of God’s kingdom. Leave your invisibilities in your past like the middy water jar around the well. The past cannot hurt the future of God’s kingdom.
The woman talked to the people in her town. It is your time to talk to your neighbors about Jesus Christ, whom you have met.
In his book, Rick Warren, the Purpose Driven Church, says people are receptive when they are in transition and under tension. I think that these people are invisible in our community. Since we are located in a transient community, there are many people who are invisible. The people who are under tension are receptive. The following are receptive people.
1. Second – time visitors to our church
2. Close friends and relatives of new converts
3. People going through a divorce
4. Those who feel their need for a recovery program (alcohol, drugs, sexual, and so forth)
5. First- time parents
6. The terminally ill and their families
7. Couple with major marriage problems
8. Parents with problem children
9. Recently unemployed or those with major financial problems
10. New residents in the community
I want to add one more in this category that is a deployed spouse.
There is a Korean laypersons who evangelized to over 5,000 people. He is called, “a king of evangelism.” The way that he evangelized was to share what Jesus had done for him and invite them to Christ and then invite them to a church.
The woman went into the city, where she lived and shared the Messiah with her people in the city. She became an unexpected, untrained evangelist, yet she was an effective evangelist.
God has used Americans to take the gospel of Jesus Christ all over the world for over 200 years. Now God wants us to reach out to our un-churched neighbors. My beloved, brothers and sisters, listen to what Jesus said about 2,000 years ago to his disciples, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Let us go to the lost of sheep of the house of America. Let us reach out to the unchurched in our community. As we go into the world and share the good news of Jesus Christ, please, remember two words, “Jesus saves!”
Exodus 17:1-7
17:1 The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin,
traveling from place to place as the LORD commanded. They camped at
Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 So they
quarreled with Moses and said, "Give us water to drink."
Moses replied, "Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the LORD to the
test?"
3 But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against
Moses. They said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our
children and livestock die of thirst?"
4 Then Moses cried out to the LORD, "What am I to do with these people?
They are almost ready to stone me."
5 The LORD answered Moses, "Walk on ahead of the people. Take with you
some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which
you struck the Nile, and go. 6 I will stand there before you by the rock
at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to
drink." So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 And he
called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and
because they tested the LORD saying, "Is the LORD among us or not?"
NIV
John 4:5-42
5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground
Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob's well was there, and Jesus,
tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the
sixth hour.
7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you
give me a drink?" 8(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan
woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with
Samaritans.)
10 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."
11 "Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is
deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our
father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also
his sons and his flocks and herds?"
13 Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,
14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the
water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to
eternal life."
15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get
thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."
16 He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."
17 "I have no husband," she replied.
Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The
fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your
husband. What you have just said is quite true."
19 "Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our
fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place
where we must worship is in Jerusalem."
21 Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will
worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You
Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for
salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when
the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they
are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his
worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
25 The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When
he comes, he will explain everything to us."
26 Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."
27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking
with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you
talking with her?"
28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said
to the people, 29 "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did.
Could this be the Christ?" 30 They came out of the town and made their way
toward him.
31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something."
32 But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."
33 Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him
food?"
34 "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to
finish his work. 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. 36 Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests
the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad
together. 37 Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. 38 I
sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard
work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."
39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the
woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." 40 So when the
Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed
two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.
42 They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you
said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is
the Savior of the world."
NIV
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