Have We Given Up On Conversation Pastor Steven Furtick - Steven Furtick

We live in the age of outrage, and we so

hide behind virtual walls and digital personas and screens that

sometimes we have forgotten how to talk. And many young

men will never know what it was like to do

this and to have to still and steady your heart

to talk to a girl on the other end of

the line. People don't talk. People don't talk no more.

All they do is this. Have you noticed? And yet

we find that God is a conversationalist. Prove it to you.

The very cadence of creation is call and response. God

spoke and it was. Everything we see is a result

of something that God spoke. And so to walk with

God is to involve yourself in a conversation. Because I

really want to model my ministry and my life after

the ministry of Jesus. And as obvious as that should sound,

I've missed it in so many ways. I missed it

because sometimes I was so focused on what Jesus said

and his words that I missed some of the context

that he said those words in. And a lot of

it was ignorance and I slowed down recently and I

noticed a pattern in Jesus' ministry. Something that he did

is so simple on the surface, you will miss it

if you are not looking for it. I'll show it

to you and by the time I show it to

you a few different ways, You'll pick right up on

it and you'll wonder, how did I never see that before?

But the first one I thought I would mention, there

are a lot of these I could have pulled from.

But since I tried to memorize the Sermon on the

Mount one time from Matthew 5 through 7, you know,

he really starts preaching around about verse 3. But verse

1 says something. I never thought much about it before.

It just says, now when Jesus saw the crowds, he

went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples

came to him, and he began to teach them. He

sat down to teach, and the Bible says at the

end of that whole discourse that the people were amazed

at his teaching because he taught as one who had authority,

not as one of their teachers of the law. He

broke their expectations by virtue of the power of his wisdom.

That was the first one I wanted to read you.

The second one is in Luke chapter 4. It's kind

Luke 4 · chapter mention

of cool because Jesus is preaching in his hometown of Nazareth.

And he was Nazarus. I was thinking Lazarus and Nazareth together.

It just kind of came out. A bit of a mashup.

But he stood up and took the scroll and he

read his scripture. And he was quoting from Isaiah 61.

He read it. But he stopped. Because he was talking

about the spirit of the Lord is on me for

he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.

Open the eyes of the blind. recovery of sight, and

he said that it is the year of the Lord's favor.

And after he had said that, look at Luke 4,

Luke 4:20

verse 20, then he rolled up the scroll, gave it

back to the attendant, and what did he do next?

Talk to me. This is a conversation. All of y'all

who look at me like some kind of clown to

entertain you, I am not used to that. I am

a conversational preacher. I need you to talk back. My

questions are not rhetorical. I really expect an answer. What

did he do after he rolled up the scroll, Jesus?

He sat down. And the funny thing was he sat

down before he got to their favorite part of the scripture.

Because after he said it's the year of the Lord's favor,

it said the day of vengeance of our God. And

they really wanted him to be the kind of Messiah

that would repay all of their enemies. But before he

got to that point, because he is full of grace

and truth, He rolled up the scroll, said it's the

year of the Lord's favor, and he sat down. And

when he sat down, the eyes of everyone in the

synagogue were fastened on him, hanging on his every word

because he was the word and the word became flesh

and dwelt among us. Jesus is God's conversation with humanity

so that if we see him, we see the father.

You got time for one more? The Bible says in

Hebrews that every priest that came before Jesus, the great

high priest, would stand. This is around about verse 11

of Hebrews chapter 10. And day after day, these human

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

priests in the religious system would stand. Offer sacrifices and

and they would stand day after day and perform religious

duties and day after day They would make atonement for

the people since day after day Performing these religious duties

again and again day after day They would stand and

offer the same sacrifices the bulls and the goats and

the and the pigeons and and everything else They could

find to kill to try to shed blood to cover

their iniquities They would do it day after day again

and again, which can never take away sense. I But,

verse 12 says, when this priest, speaking of Jesus, had

offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, what did

he do? So I got good news for you. He

didn't sit down because he was tired. He sat down

because he was finished. He sat down because everything that

needed to be done for you to be right with

God was accomplished on that cross. And when he did it,

when he stretched his arms and shed his blood and

breathed his last, got up from the grave with all

power in his hand, trampling over death, hell, and the grave,

he sat down at the right hand of God to

make his enemies his footstool. Pretty cool that he's still

seated today. No matter how anxious the world is, Jesus

is not pacing the halls of heaven, wondering what I'm

going to do about this. Do me a favor, touch

somebody and say, he's still seated. It's interesting to me

that he sat down. But my favorite time that Jesus

sat down is recorded in John chapter 4. This one's

John 4 · chapter mention

a little different because he sat down in a strange place.

He sat down in a town called Samaria. The Bible

says he had to go through Samaria. Technically, he didn't

have to do anything. He is God. But there was

an appointment he wanted to keep in Samaria that he

did not give to the disciples to put on the itinerary.

He knew about it. He had a reason, a conversation

that was waiting in Samaria. When he came to a

town in Samaria called Sychar near the plot of ground

Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was

there and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey,

because he's fully God and he's fully man, so he

got tired. Jesus had to blow his nose. Jesus had

to sleep. Jesus cried as a baby. You know the

Christmas carol, little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes. It's wrong.

It's pretty, but it's not true. He cried. Screamed his

head off. And Jesus, tired as he was from the journey,

sat down by the well. It was about noon, and

when a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said

to her, Will you give me a drink? A quick question.

How many of you believe that Jesus is the answer?

Just raise your hand if you believe that. So if

Jesus is the answer, what is he doing asking a question?

to a woman as a rabbi who's not supposed to

speak to a woman, to a woman who we will

find out in the course of the conversation, we're not

gonna read it today, but if we did, we'd find

out she had questionable conduct. A woman who had not

only questionable behavioral conduct, but a completely different belief system

than Jesus. A different belief system, a different moral code,

and a different ethnicity. So why would Jesus sit down

and start a conversation? Something that the church isn't very

good at is something that the Savior came to do.

To start conversations with people who were different. And we've

lost the art of conversation in our culture today. I

can't speak to the whole world, but at least in America,

we don't do conversation anymore. We do comments. Y'all aren't

going to help me. You're going to leave me right

up here on this stool by myself. I don't even

have a pulpit to hide behind. We do comments. We

do comments. One of my friends told me he calls

when people go on and leave nasty comments but won't

say it to your face. He calls that internet courage.

We live our lives sometimes in echo chambers where digital

algorithms are force-feeding us our preconceived prejudice and reinforcing our biases.

And then we will sit down and watch news programming

that is owned by the same conglomerate that sells us

our antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication where they will gather people

on a panel to talk about a cultural or social

issue and they'll call it a conversation but it's really

a cage match because we don't know how to have

a conversation. And the church is not much better sometimes

because we're always wanting to know where do we stand

on the issue? Well, we do need to take a

stand standing for truth and standing for what's right and

standing for justice and turning back the battle at the gate.

And all of that is important. But Nelson Mandela once

said that where you stand. depends on where you sit

your beliefs are shaped by your background and sometimes we

speak before we sit sometimes as a preacher I've been

better at developing my one liners than listening to the

worldview of somebody who was different than me. And I

believe that Jesus gives us a model here of conversation.

He asks this woman a question. And the woman, verse 9,

was really shocked. She said, You're a Jew. I'm a Samaritan.

I'm a woman. You're a man. How can you ask

me for a drink? For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.

Yet the Savior sat by the well. and spoke with

this woman. And he said to 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. And they had

a conversation. And because of that conversation, the gates to

the entire region of Samaria were open for the year

of the Lord's favor. And it didn't start with a

statement that Jesus made. It started with, Conversation. He sat down.