#Sharing the good news

Well, we are continuing in our gospel series.

Stick to the notes. Mark and I just grateful to God

for this opportunity we've had as a church to look at the

gospel with the good news. And if you've been around or

indeed if you have caught up and many of you are watching online

at the moment, we've been looking at the good news and

it's a four parter, love a good four parter.

The first week we unpacked the truth that if there is good

news, it is there because there exists bad news.

And without understanding the bad news, the the gospel isn't

really good news. And so we dive quite deeply and

well done for getting through that talk on what actually the

bad news is. And actually we did cover some

quite deep theological items in that, but I hope that it was

served in a palatable way for you to eat and digest.

But indeed, the bad news exists. And then the second week we

looked at what is the good news, That was a fun week.

We actually looked at what happened on the cross of

Calvary, what happened when Jesus died, and indeed he rose

again and indeed is glorified with the Father.

What is that good news for us? And what does that mean for us?

Last week we looked at live in the gospel, which is the fact

that we're not only saved by the gospel.

It's not a one time event. It's not just, hey, I've got my

ticket to heaven, right? Let's do what I want to do that

we are called to live out the gospel.

And last week we unpacked that together.

And so we end on sharing the gospel.

How do we share the gospel? I'm going to pray, and then

we're going to get into that. Lord, we want to say thank you

for the good news. The good news not of a magic

formula. The good news not of facts, but

the good news of Jesus himself. And we asked Cody Spirit, that

you would come this morning and that you would speak, to

continue, indeed to speak to our hearts as we incline our ear to

you, Lord, our battle is not against flesh and blood, but

against principalities and powers.

And the reality is law, that the enemy would not want us, want us

to hear this word, nor act upon it.

And so I asked Cody, Spirit, that you would just help us

remove any distractions. Would we make a decision to fix

our eyes? And you, Jesus, as we hear your

word and your truth this morning, we ask in your name.

Amen. Now in in in kind of looking at

sharing the gospel. I mean, we could do a whole

series on sharing the gospel. There are many methods and ways

in which you can share the gospel.

I'm not. I'm not going to be able to in

in an hour and a half to give you now.

You pick that up. Thank you.

I'm not going to be able to give you in 25 minutes the definitive

guide. What I'm hoping to do is give

you a starter for 10, a bit of a taster and excite you to the

opportunity to share the gospel. And in order to do this, we're

going to look at essentially 4 things.

One is, what does it mean to share the gospel, #2 why should

we share the gospel, #3 difficult that we encounter with

sharing the gospel? And #4, how we can share the

gospel, And let's start with why does it?

What does it mean to share the gospel?

Well, in in many respects, sharing the gospel, what does it

mean? It's a very simple thing.

It means sharing Jesus with others.

I mean, that's essentially what it means.

If we understand that the gospel itself is the good news of Jesus

himself, then in terms of sharing the good news, we are

called to be a witness, to share Jesus with others.

You know at the at the start of the Reach series, when we looked

at the vision for the church, I looked at the fact that we're

akin to a lifeboat, place, place, lifeboat, club, house.

Thank you, Trevor. A lifeboat, lifeboat house where

we are here to go and save the people that are going to be

broken up on the rocks of sin. And so we get into our lifeboats

and we go and save people. And as I unpacked that I said

the danger of being a lifeboat house is we can get comfortable

being in the house and we forget that we've got a lifeboat there

we need to use. And you see, sharing the gospel,

we need to recognize that there is the thing called the Great

Commission that we've been called to share Jesus because

the time is short and the bad news is really bad news.

And as good news bearers, that's what you are, We have a role to

play in sharing that good news with one another.

And really what it is, it's a Kingdom activity.

What do I mean by Kingdom in this age of the here and not

yet. And I won't go into the detail

of that. I did so maybe last week or the

week before, you know, the Kingdom of God is breaking in.

Do we know this? The rule on the on the reign of

God is breaking in. He inaugurated it when he came

2000 years ago and died and rose again.

And he will consummate that Kingdom when he comes again,

which he will Maranatha come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.

But in this time of the here and not yet, we are called to extend

his Kingdom where we are. That's why we are ambassadors of

Christ. You know where an ambassador

resides in a foreign land. That is the the, the sovereign

soil of where the ambassador comes from.

Yeah. And so the reason we're called

ambassadors of Christ is because you take God's Kingdom with you

where you step. Did you know that?

And God's Kingdom. When God's Kingdom breaks in, we

should expect to see signs and wonders.

We should expect to see the very presence of God, healing and

saving. That's what we should expect.

And that therefore is our role when we share the gospel.

What we are doing is we are extending God's Kingdom here on

earth. Who praise the Lord's Prayer.

Our Father who art in heaven. Hallow be your name.

Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in

heaven. And God says good prayer.

Go on then. Off you go.

What? What you mean I'm here to extend

your Kingdom here on earth? Yep.

Oh, if I knew that, I don't think I'd have prayed that.

Well, that's what you signed up for.

You see, sharing the gospel is a Kingdom activity.

It's about extending the rule and the reign of Christ here on

earth. Do we get that?

And so that's what it means to share the gospel.

It's very simple. It means sharing Jesus.

And we're going to look at how we can do that in a moment.

But why should we? While I've covered that already,

you know one Peter 315. Peter says this in your heart.

On a Christ, the Lord is holy. Listen to this always being

prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason

for the hope that is in you. We are to be prepared.

If you are here and you're sitting here and you confess and

profess a faith in Jesus Christ, and that with that you can

declare that you have a hope in him, if that's you, then you got

to be prepared to share why you have a hope in Christ.

Did you know that? And I know quite frankly that

many times in my life I'm not prepared.

And part of that is, and that's why I I addressed at the start

of this series, is we don't fully understand what we what

the good news is we're giving. That's why I felt of the Lord as

I shared to you an unction upon me of the Spirit of God to

preach very clearly on the gospel.

And what is the gospel? Because unless you know what the

gospel is and the work of Christ on the cross, then it's very

difficult to be prepared to share the hope that you have.

Does that make sense? But we move on, therefore, to

the difficulties we encounter. Because I hope that that what

you hear from this pulpit is truth.

I hope you hear it in a relevant way that it's applicable to your

life. But I also hope that what you

hear is the reality of life and how difficult it can be

sometimes. Because I would suggest that the

irony is that churches of the place where we put the most

amount of masks on, you walk in and you you put on your holy

mask. I'm sure you don't of course,

But. And I don't know about you, but

I'm. I'm going to be completely

honest whenever I heard about right, I'm someone's going to

preach and share in the gospel. There's a little part of me.

It's like, Oh no, please don't. Did he say that?

Oh no, Why don't I feel condemned?

Because not very good at it. I feel like I can't be bothered

because I'm so tired. Listen, you might look at me and

think, wow, he's a zealous man of God.

Maybe you don't. I don't want to put words in

your mouth. But the reality is I'm not

zealous all the time. And quite frankly, got one of

the trustees over here. Bruce McKinnon, our chair of

trustees over there. See him?

Winfield. Sometimes I can't be bothered.

I'm too tired. And so when I hear about sharing

the gospel, I'm like, I know none of you are like that.

But when we talk about sharing the gospel, we can often say,

well, that's for the extroverts. I'm an introvert.

I've used that excuse or it's difficult.

I tried it before and it didn't work.

So why try again? I I felt that.

Or maybe we've lost hope because we've been disappointed.

We've shared the gospel, we went to extend the Kingdom and it was

like, egg on my face. I mean, anyone tried praying for

someone in a supermarket. It's great when it works, but

when it doesn't, it's like, that's embarrassing, isn't it?

I'm trying to be real here with you just is this helpful?

So what I don't want you to hear from the pastor is share the

gospel or you'll be bad. I'm not saying that I'm trying

to encourage you and excite you to the opportunity and convict

you to the opportunity, but I equally want to be real about

the challenges we face when we go and try and do so.

OK, does that that help? So with that, let's get into

some scripture. We're going to look at a

wonderful story. I know you know this, some of

you, John Four. It's the story of Jesus and the

woman at the well. And what I love about this story

is it does a really good job of showing how we can share the

gospel. The way Jesus models it is

wonderful, and the way the woman at the well models it thereafter

is wonderful. And as we then unpack, how can

we share the gospel? We'll find some very insightful

things within this account. Now we're going to go from verse

7 and we're going to continue to read up until a later verse.

When I get to it. I don't know what it is yet, but

we'll keep reading and we'll stop when I need to stop.

It will be on the screen in the room.

If you're online, it may be on your device as well.

Let us read a woman, a woman from Samaria came to draw water

and Jesus said to her, give me a drink.

His disciples have gone away into the city to buy food.

The Samaritan woman said to. By the way, I don't think that

Jesus said give me a drink. I think he said, would you give

me a drink? Just want to clarify that point,

the Samaritan woman said to him. How is it that you, a Jew, asked

for a drink from a woman of Samaria?

For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans?

Jesus answered her. If you knew the gift of God and

who it is that is saying 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

water with, and the well is deep.

Where do you get this living water?

Are you greater than our Father, Jacob?

He gave us the well and drank from himself, as did his sons

and his livestock. Jesus said to everyone who

drinks of this water will be thirsty again.

But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never

be thirsty again. The water that I will give him

will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal

life. The woman said to him.

Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to

come here to draw water. Jesus said to go call your

husband and come here, the woman answered him.

I have no husband, Jesus said to her, You are right in saying I

have no husband, for you have had five husbands and the one

you now have is, well, not your husband.

What you have said is true, Woman said to him.

Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain.

But you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to

worship, Jesus said to her woman, believe me, the hour is

coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will

you worship the Father. You worship that which you do

not know. We worship what we know, for the

salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and deed

is now here when the true worshippers will worship the

Father in spirit and in truth. That's what I talked about a

couple of weeks ago. That is why we are to be born

again by the Spirit of God. You cannot worship God unless

you are born again. It's about restored relationship

with our Father. The spirit of adoption cries in

us. ABBA Father.

That's what happens when we are saved.

God is spirit and those who worship him must be in spirit,

in truth, the woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming.

He who is called Christ, when he comes, he will tell us all

things. Jesus said to her, I who speak

to you am he. I think we'll stop at that

point. What a great story.

I mean, there's so much we could comment on that Jesus always

seeked out the marginalized and the less than in society.

You know, women were put to the side, never spoken to.

And it would never have been the case that a man would speak to a

woman in that so directly she was a Samaritan.

There's no way that a Jew would be seen with a Samaritan.

And yet here is Jesus giving her time and space.

So wonderful. And I think that we can learn a

lot from this. As I said, and I want to split

this into two parts. The first thing is how we can be

ready. And the first thing I want to

say this is we need to be expectant and open to divine

appointments. That's the first thing I would

say to you. Be expectant and open to divine

appointments. God will place people in your

path where you will have an opportunity to share Jesus with

them. These are not accidents.

It's not a coincidence. God is acting and he is creating

opportunities for you to share the gospel.

You know, I think it's very interesting here.

I believe that Jesus was always expected for divine

appointments. In fact, if you read the

scriptures prior to these verses, he made a choice to go

through that way. I believe he was waiting for

this moment. He knew it was coming and so he

was already ready to speak with this woman at the world.

And what I want to say to you is listen, recognize your area of

influence that God has placed you in because that is your

mission field. We can.

Often times I remember when I wasn't in the ministry and

earlier on in my career I was like, I wish I could be in the

ministry. Then I can share the gospel.

Listen, you are in the place where your pastor can't get to.

You know I'm here to equip you for the work of the Ministry as

it talks about in Ephesians 17. I am here to help equip you so

that you can be effective in your mission field.

Yeah, and maybe tomorrow you need to look at your day

slightly differently that you need to be expecting to say,

Lord, would I be open to a divine appointment in my

workplace tomorrow? Would I be ready and willing and

open with someone that needs to hear the good news of you,

Jesus? And for some of us, I think

that's a bit of a mindset shift, A that God is divinely working

to position you to share the gospel, and B that where God has

placed you is where he has appointed you to be a minister

of grace and to share the gospel because your pastor can't get to

where you are. And I think Jesus was always

indeed He was. You read the scriptures and he

never rushed. Have you noticed that he always

got to where he needed to get to?

He was never. He was kind of late, a couple of

times late by world standards. Dareth's daughter and Lazarus,

of course. But but in that moment of

walking, he was never rushed. I mean, what about the woman

with the issue of blood? He's this crowd and he's moving

through the crowd. And this woman reaches out to

touch his ham and she gets healed.

Now he doesn't just say, oh, I just felt some power go out of

me, let's keep walking. He stopped.

Who was that? And not only did you say, oh,

nice to meet, you prayed a blessing.

And I think that's that really does speak to me because I

recognize in my life when I'm not bothered, because I'm, I'm

tired and I'm weary because I'm doing too much.

I think that the enemy wants to get us so busy that we're

rushing all over the place and we miss out on divine

appointments and then we use things like I'm tired or I'm an

introvert. These are all my excuses, when

actually that is not the truth. The truth is I got too busy and

I haven't been expecting an open that God is divinely appointing

my steps. And I think we can learn a lot

from the way Jesus walked. Not rushing, not running, but

open to those divine appointments, he didn't say to

the woman. Listen, I'm really thirsty.

I've got 5 minutes. Can you please get that bucket

in the water? Give it to me so I can move on.

He didn't do that, did he? I love that.

Be ready. Be expected #2 Live your life in

worship to him. This is how you can be ready.

I am convinced, I'm convinced that the degree to which you can

share Jesus is the degree to which you allow Jesus to operate

in your life. Now, I don't.

I I I say that with some caveats.

I believe that there are by his grace moments in our brokenness

and our emptiness that God uses our words in a powerful way to

share the good news of Jesus. OK, But what I have noticed as

being a pastor to my own walk is that as I, as I dwell in his

presence, more as I experience his love, it kind of spills out

and you want to tell people. I mean, I remember when Steph

and I first met 20 odd years ago and I fell in love, head over

hills within the space of a few days.

I did something crazy and told her I loved her.

After a week I was like, blow it, I'll just tell her.

Turns out she felt the same. Thank you Lord.

But I remember those moments. I will tell everybody about this

girl I've met called Steph. I paused for dramatic effects.

It's not that I forgot my wife's name.

I will tell everybody about Steph.

I've got to tell you, I've just met this amazing girl called

Steph. Oh, she's amazing.

She makes me so happy. And the way she understands me,

no one's understood me like Steph does, you know?

And when I'm with her, I feel so comfortable.

I feel myself, quite frankly. And you know, when I'm with her,

I don't worry about the future. I just have such a peace and

enjoyment of the present. I'm not having to make this up.

But you see my point, the illustration I think plays out

in our lives with Jesus, doesn't it?

You see, as we experience his love and his acceptance.

And the grace and the mercy and just the joy.

And if we allow it to bubble up, we just can't help but tell

people about him. And So what I would say to you

is that allow yourself to allow that love to spill out and get

reacquainted with your first love.

Maybe you're here this morning, maybe you're watching online and

and you know what? You can't remember the last time

you spoke about Jesus in that way.

Maybe that's a an invitation from Jesus to spend time with

him and get reacquainted with your first love.

But the second part about living a life in worship to him is your

actions and the way you live your life is a witness to other

people. When you go through difficulty

and hardship and yet you are still able to come here on a

Sunday and worship God, that says something that words cannot

even say. When you're talking to your

friends and they're joking about how they managed to, you know,

evade the tax man or they managed to get that kid into a

school by pretending they went to, you know, a Christian School

and pretending they went to a church and got the form, they

joke about it, I mean, or etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

And you're sitting there thinking, well, I don't do any

of that stuff. And I think that's weird.

Why don't you? You've got to get the most out

of this life. You see your life.

The way you lead your life says something that words cannot say,

and it is attractive and people are interested.

So I would say these two things #1 be prepared, be expectant and

open to divine appointments, and #2 live your life in worship to

him. So I think that's the first part

of being ready. Here comes the second part of

that moment where you are with somebody and you have an

opportunity to share the good news.

You've recognized the divine appointment.

And I've got five things. What?

10:50? Is that clock not working?

Wow. OK, I'm going to give you an

overview that you can study later at your own leisure.

Note to self reformat the Sunday services.

Sharing, sharing the good news #1.

Listen to people. Listen.

Jesus listened and showed kindness.

We are so often so almost excited to bash someone over the

head with some new theological truth that we've learned that we

don't listen to the person Jesus was listening to this woman.

I mean, if I was Jesus, I would have said hold the phone, I

already know what you're gonna say.

Let me just tell you like it is. He listened, didn't he?

In gentleness and listened in kindness.

When you are there and you're about to share the good news of

Christ, listen to what the person's got to say.

Because I tell you, the world needs great listeners right now.

There are no good listeners. Jesus.

Model what it meant to give the person dignity to listen to them

and to their story. The second thing is recognize

the symptoms behind the condition.

Now, this is really important. Verse 15, let me just have a

look at this. Yeah.

You know, we talked about at the start of the series that the

condition is that we are separated from God.

OK, Now, it's very unlikely that someone's going to come to you

and say, yeah, you know what? I just feel like I'm.

I have a broken relationship with God.

They may do, and that's happened to me before.

But most of the time, rather than tell you the condition,

they'll tell you the symptoms. It's like if you have a a

condition that you go to the doctor, you go to the doctor

because the doctor can recognize your symptoms and then tell you

what the cure is and so keep your ear out for the symptoms.

Things like, I just have a real emptiness.

I just don't have a piece. I just put my head down at night

and I just can't sleep. I'm so worried.

Well, I don't understand why I've got this broken

relationship. You know, there is a world out

there demonstrating to us the condition of their lives, and we

can speak into the cure. But you need to listen and

listen out for the symptoms that they show. #3 speak, therefore,

about the condition and the cure.

This is where you speak truth. Jesus did this with the woman of

the world. You want to talk about Thirsty?

Let me tell you that there's a living water that would never

run out. You've got no peace, I tell you.

I can tell you about myself. There is a great peace that I

found in Jesus. You see, you speak to the

symptom and you show the cure is Jesus.

You feel lonely even though you've got people around you.

You know, I think possibly that's because you've yet to

really recognize that you're that you are called to be a

child of God, and in that place you find acceptance and that

loneliness goes. You see what I'm doing there,

but you need to listen first. You need to hear that story

first. You rarely go in with a

theological polemic and with this, this is where you can

Share your story. And I've showed that a little

bit there, didn't I? You know, I felt like that once,

but I want to tell you something.

I met Jesus. Oh, I know this Jesus.

You keep telling me that. I know you've heard this so many

times before. But listen now, I want to say

something else at this point. Before I start finishing this

list, we need to recognize that in those divine appointments, in

those conversations, you're not the one making it happen.

You are being used by God to speak truth in.

But his Holy Spirit is working in the heart of the hero.

OK, and A, that takes the pressure off you because you

feel like you got to convince someone to accept Jesus, but B,

you need to recognize that that the Lord is working in someone's

heart. And the reason that's important

that you could say, well, I've had this conversation with so

and so like 10 times before. Yeah, you might be keep so in

seeds, but the Holy Spirit is watering those seeds and this

might be the moment. So speak truth, speak to the

cure about the cure and speak into the condition. #4.

Then offer to pray about the symptoms.

You know, often say listen, would you like praying, a

blessing that you would feel the the love of the peace of God.

I was recently in London doing some St. photography.

Some of you know that I like street photography and I got

chatting to a guy and I could sense this was a divine

appointment. He said, oh, what you doing?

I'm taking some pictures, blah blah blah.

And we got chatting. I said, I'm a pastor and I said,

ah, interesting. And I knew something was going

to. What's happening?

I said, what about you? Do you go to a church?

Do you, do you believe in God? And he unpacked his story a

little bit. I was listening.

And he, I could tell that as he was talking, he was someone

that's had a bad experience with church.

And And he therefore resorted to fact that, well, we're all

spiritual and therefore always lead to God.

I said, well, you know, I believe that God loves you.

I believe that God has made a way through Jesus.

Would you mind if I just pray a blessing on you and I could see

the Holy Spirit on him? How could I see the Holy Spirit

on him? There was an openness about it.

You can see he was slightly emotional.

And I said, let me pray. And I said, he said, yeah, OK,

fine. It's very rarely that someone

would say no to that. So I just said, Lord God, would

you just reveal yourself to so? And so's name, would they know

that you love them and would you presence yourself with them?

That's what I prayed. And he started crying.

He's like, what's going on? I said that's the Holy Spirit.

That's that's the Lord demonstrating to you that he

loves you. Oh, wow.

You see, you speak the truth, and then you show the truth.

That's extending God's Kingdom. You see, maybe someone says I've

had battled with this sickness for so long, but I believe that

God's a healer. Would you mind if I prayed for

your healing? OK, sure.

Now it takes some courage and boldness, but step out and give

it a go. Lord God, I just pray you would

show yourself to so and so and show your love.

I pray healing upon this leg or whatever it might be.

So that's four. Are you with me, #5 As we bring

this plane into land, I'll invite the band up.

At this point, extend an invitation.

What do I mean by extended invitation?

There are some that you will get a sense that they want more at

that point. And the invitation is this.

It could be. Listen, why don't you come along

to church for me on Sunday? Why don't you come along to my

Rise group that meets on Wednesday?

Why don't you come along to the men's BBQ?

Yeah, just some guys come around, have some good food and

chat, you know, Why don't you do that?

Why don't you come over, We'll have a cup of tea.

Talk about it some more. Invite them to church, invite

them to something social. And for some they are ready to

to receive that water, that living water.

And you say, would you like to to to meet this Jesus?

Now would you like to receive his forgiveness and his love?

Because you are separated from God.

But as we've just talked about, and as you've just seen, Jesus

is inviting you personally today.

Because you know, even if you were just the only person here

on this planet, God the Father would still send

here is not a step by step list that you have to remember.

These are not step by step steps.

Does that make sense? Thank you Step by step steps

these dynamics or aspects of how you can share the gospel to

those two people around you #1 listen, #2 recognize the

symptoms behind the condition, #3 speak into the condition and

about the cure, #4 offer to pray about the symptoms and the cure,

and #5 extend an invitation. This church, let us stand.