Sermon
How to Give Away Your Faith
January 27-28, 2001
Pastor Donald Sheley

I'm going to ask you to look into your bulletin and I've printed the sermon, or I've had it printed so I don't have to preach it today, okay? (Congregation chuckles) In your book, or in your bulletin I have had printed for you a text of the second chapter in a book written by Paul Little entitled "How to Give Away Your Faith". Now my philosophy in life is when you find something that's good, why re-create the wheel? And I felt that this handled very well what I wanted to talk to you about, but by giving it to you in printed form over your lunch today or with your family you can read what's on my mind. We have in the last few weeks, in our study in the gospel of John, we've been analyzing this whole scene where in John chapter 4 Jesus goes out of His way to a little village called Sychar, north of Jerusalem a few miles, and he meets there at the well a lady. And we've learned that in custom and culture in Christ's time Jewish teachers or rabbis did not talk with women publicly. That was unacceptable, and yet, Jesus struck up this conversation with this Samaritan woman. And it was interesting to observe how He proceeded from very graciously dealing with the subject of water, because she'd come with her bucket to get some water. He leads the conversation on to a kind of water that she knows nothing about. He excites her interest. The conversation continues. Then He brings up the subject of living water, and by this time her heart is open and we observe in this story, and you can read it in John chapter 4.

We, last Sunday, started at verse 27 where it says that when the conversation, or it implies that when Jesus finished the conversation with this lovely little lady something had taken place in her heart. She now believes she's talked with the Messiah. And when the disciples return from town, from whence they're bringing some food, she slips away from the scene and hurries back to the village, and she said you've got to come and see a Man that told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ? And in verse 30 of that passage it says, they left the village and they came to Jesus. And we go on down another 5 or 6 verses and it says and many believed because of her testimony. And here is the beautiful picture of a soul finding what the heart longs for in the person of Christ, and now she goes and tells others and brings them to Christ. We call that personal evangelism. It's witnessing our faith to the folks around us wherever that might be, and it's our prayer as Christians that these people who are longing for life's reality and the meaning of life will find something in us and our faith that will draw them to Jesus. And so the subject for the last couple of Sunday's has been personal evangelism. Remember last week we talk about this fact that when Paul considered himself as an evangelist he considered himself as a steward, as a herald, and as an ambassador. We only got to point one, but as a steward he felt that he was given a divine treasure for which he was responsible for passing out. And he said that treasure is the light of the knowledge of God, 1 Corinthians 4:6, the light of the knowledge of God in the person of Jesus Christ. So if Christ has revealed Himself to you, you trust Him as Lord and savior, all of us have a divine treasure not to keep, Paul said, but to pass it out to others. And verse 7 of 1 Corinthians 4 says that He placed this treasure in earthen vessels -- that's us. This divine treasure of eternal truth He gave it to us, and in all of our frailties and all of our humanness we're to pass those treasures of divine truth onto others.

Now that sets the whole focus. Today will not be a sermon because you'll have to read it when you go home. This is the form of an announcement today. We set as our goal for the year 2001 evangelism. Now that doesn't mean that every year shouldn't be evangelism here at the church. What it means is that we're giving special emphasis to ways we can reach out into our community and attract people to Jesus Christ. That's our goal this year. Now let me tell you how we're doing that. Let's take item number one: this Friday and Saturday 80 or 90 men are going down to Pescadero. Of that group, a number of those men that are coming are not Christians. They've been invited by their friends and so what I want you to do this week, and I've talked with the leaders of the men's group, we're going to be praying that God's presence and the reality of Christ so dominates that time away that those men who are looking for life's answer will find it in Jesus. Wouldn't that be something if those dozen or so men came home from that conference and their lives totally transformed just like the lady's was at the well of Sychar? Because when a man gives his life to Christ he usually, it isn't much time before he brings in the entire family into the faith. So we're going to pray for them. That's one of our first events of evangelism.

Now let me share with you the second one. Pastor Ralph and I went over to the South San Francisco Convention Center on Airport Boulevard and we have rented that for Easter Sunday, and what we're going to have is we're going to have services not only there, but here, and the reason why we're doing that is last Easter in one service alone we had 1400 people in this building. We had closed circuit television in almost every place, so by renting that facility we will have an additional 2000 seats. And we're going to, we haven't logistically got it all figured out, we're going to be doing that this week, but we're going to have services there and services here. And you can see the complexity of the logistics of that, but what we're going to do is we're going to be sending out invitations to 167,000 homes. That's every home in San Mateo County and we're going to invite them to share Easter with us. Now that is an event which I need your help, if you have any ways to help us in terms of greeting people, helping us in planning of the event, telling people about it. I need your help because we're going to put together our convention team. We've got a number of weeks before Easter and we're going to pray that God uses that event. And what we're going to do is because we're taking that place -- you say, why did you do that Pastor? We can't have any more services here. We already have 5 on Sunday and the timeframe just doesn't allow us any more services, but by having it over there, as I say, it gives a neutral place because a lot of people don't want to go to church but they'll go to a convention center. Got my point? I mean, churches scare them but convention centers don't. So what our plans are is we're going to have a City Easter Celebration. This will be Church of the Highlands' celebration, and we're going to pray that this becomes an exciting event. We're trying to touch our community for Jesus.

Now during the month of May we're going to have an evangelistic clinic. What we're doing is we're inviting in representatives from Navigators, Evangelism Explosion, all/many of the major evangelistic ministries across the nation and we're going to spend a weekend having those folks tell us different ways of how we can touch our family and our community with the love of Christ. That sounds exciting.

Now then comes, that's May, then comes June, July, and August and we're thinking about having a tent and setting it up someplace. If you're old as I am you remember tent revivals. The old tent camp meetings. You remember that? You've heard about them. We're thinking of ways different where we can attract people in our community to come and hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. We're really seeking God's wisdom and how can we be different in the sense of reaching out to our community in different ways in showing them the love of Christ. So this whole idea of this woman going back to her village, bringing the whole village to Jesus has so excited my heart in terms -- we ought to be able to reach our Sychar for Jesus.

Now I'll quickly just summarize what Dr. Little says. Dr. Little who wrote that little book was the leader of an international group known as Inter-Varsity, which deals with students on university campuses in spiritual matters. And Paul died a few years ago but he wrote this wonderful book, and he analyzes the story of the woman at the well and how Jesus proceeds to lead her to Christ. He begins his first paragraph, when you read it when you get to lunch today, Paul says that witnessing or sharing our faith is more than just verbalizing it. It's living it out. In other words, the world has listened to Christians long enough and they say, why don't you live it what you lip? It's a good criticism, isn't it? Sometimes we say a lot as Christians we don't, we live something else. And so Paul's approach to this is lifestyle evangelism. Now if I say to you now we're all going to go witnessing from door-to-door this week and here's the plan we're going to follow, most of you would be scared away. Right? Right, because we get fearful when we think that we have to say something. But, if we adapted as a congregation an evangelism lifestyle -- living our Christian testimony in ways without having to lip it, once people see Christianity lived out they'll want the same Christ we want.

I read a report that just comes out of New Zealand and Australia. The churches down there decided, look at, we've preached enough and nobody listens. Let's start living our Christian faith, and so the churches in New Zealand got together and say, what can we do for our community that will show them the love of Christ and let that be the instrument that draws them. So the ladies of the churches got together and they arranged to go to the homes of single mothers raising children who were struggling to make life's ends meet, and they would say to the single mothers, we'll take little Johnny or Mary free of charge. We're going to take care of them while you work so you can get ahead financially. Now if you're a single mom and a lovely Christian lady came to your home and said I'll take care of your children just because I want to help you, it doesn't take very long for that mother to wonder what causes a heart to do that. They said the men in some of the churches set up temporary garages and on Saturday anybody in the community who wanted the oil changed in their car came and the change the oil free. And the people would say, who would change my oil in my car free? And when they learned it was the Christians down at the church, then they say now that's the kind of Christianity I'm interested in.

Let me show you. We have a wonderful, wonderful youth Pastor. I think he's the best in the world. Don't tell him. (Congregation claps) But Rick decided we're going to do this as kids, so he took the opportunity to go over to South San Francisco El Camino High, I think it is, or South San Francisco High. So he said to the vice principal, we want to come and clean up your school. And the principal, I mean, here are kids coming. You don't hear about that. Rick said no strings attached. We understand you're having this big event on Friday evening, and we're going to be here on Saturday to clean your school up. All right, all right, all right. So Rick takes about 20 or 25 of our young people from our church, they all go over to South San Francisco High School, and all day long they work and they collect 19, I think, sacks, large sacks, of garbage. They just cleaned up and swept. The vice principal stops by in the afternoon. I said, I can't believe this. And you know he just opened his heart he said, is there something I can do for you? This was before Christmas. Rick said, we're putting together socks. Well tell me about your socks. So our kids told the vice principal about the socks, and he said, well we can get involved in that, can't we? Rick says sure. Well he said what I'll do is, he said, I'll pit the classes and we'll have contest between classes in the school. I mean, now he's got the vice principal excited. And they did that, and he said, I think we can get other schools involved too. Do you know that when Rick and his team went back to that school the other day and picked up the socks, over 100 socks stuffed and the principal was so excited. What has happened? The door is wide-open, the kids have their Bible time. What it says is we're going to live out our faith. We're not just going to talk about it, but that has so amazed the school officials that our kids would come and clean up their school. Isn't that great?

See here's what I'm saying, if you and I as a congregation stopped just trying to lip it and really started to live it. So how do you do that, you say, Pastor? Well here's what I'm doing. When I get up in the morning I say, Jesus, I want You to open my eyes so that when there's a need of which I can respond in a very practical, helpful way and be Christ-like, You make me sensitive to those opportunities so I can do it, and I'll do it for Your glory. And I'll tell you it's amazing where you begin to see where you can say a kind word or do something gracious, and because of the loveliness and the graciousness of your heart that person's going to say, hey, there's something about this person. And I'll tell you when we live out our faith. You know, that little lady went back from that well, they all knew her. She had been married or at least had five husbands and the one she was living with wasn't her husband. They knew her. But here's a lady comes back so dramatically changed. Always before she wanted something from them, now she wants them to have something from the Man that she's met. Totally changed, and it was this dramatic change that brought the village people out to meet Jesus. And if in these weeks to come as we pursue this whole ministry of reaching out into our community, we say, Jesus, we just want to be like You. We want to be sensitive to people's needs and we want to be as helpful. We're not going to just blast them with religious scripture verses. We're going to live Your love in our community.

You say, what's another plan you might have Pastor? Well, what we're planning on doing is we're going to be approaching the city officials this week or as soon as possible and our plans are to participate in the building of an amphitheater down in the city park. Why? Because we don't have one in San Bruno. Why? I don't know, but if we had a lovely amphitheater down there that seated 1000, we can go down there and have church and they can use it for anything they want to. (Congregation claps) And you know, you can imagine when a preacher walks into a city official and says we want to do something for you when it's usually the church saying we want you to do something for us. So I'm saying how can we as Church of the Highlands in our community say to our community, this is what we want to do for you in the love of Christ? And it gives them a place to have their events, but it gives us a wonderful place to have our events. Now I know that this is an entirely. You've never heard me...now this is not a sermon. Remember this is not a sermon. You've got to read the sermon when you go home. I'm just putting seed thoughts in your mind. This is a year we're going to touch our community in ways we're asking God to help us and we never dreamed of before. Are you with me? (Congregation claps)

Jesus, we really don't know how to make this thing work other than just saying here we are, and if You will prompt our hearts and open our eyes so this week we can participate in opportunities of kindness of Christ-likeness that will cause people to be attracted to You, that's what we want to do. Here we are. We're Yours to be used for Your glory, and everybody said, amen. When you...soon you leave the parking lot and there will be a sign and that sign will say: "You Are Now Entering the Mission Field". (Congregation Chuckles) Go forth to your mission field. All right?