Missional Calling - Being a witness in Samaria

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They do a great team, don't they, the tech team, and we are really thankful for them for their commitment week by week. If you've got your Bible seat, you might open up the Acts chapter 1 and verse 8. The second song we sang finished with these words, ready to do your will. So my question to you this morning is, you ready to do God's will? We are going to pray about that. Father, we sing about it, but we talk about it, but we actually need, with your empowering, to translate that into action, ready to do your will. Pray that even as we look at this passage this morning and its implications for us, that we will indeed be ready to do your will, for not only your sake, but for the world's sake. Amen. The church has, in its DNA, the whole aspect of mission, right from the beginning, right through. Mission is a part of our DNA, and so it's been chosen for our verse, for missions month, as we think about it for the month of May, this Acts chapter 1 and verse 8. It reads this way, it says, but you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Hopefully soon, you'll see it in a couple of different versions, up on the screen. There we go, and in the NIV is what I read, the Amplified and the Living Bible, and you can read that through, but there are some significant words that occur in this verse. Of course, what has happened, Luke is telling the story, he's written the Gospel of Luke, and now he's writing the book of Acts, and he picks it up after the resurrection, and Jesus, these are his last few hours here on earth, and he's speaking with his disciples, and he's talking about a whole range of things, and they've got questions for him as well, and then he gives these words to them in Acts chapter 1 and verse 8, but you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. As I said, there's some key words in this verse that we need to take note of. Probably, we're immediately attracted to word power, because this whole aspect of power is something which is prominent in our society today. Several different words in the Greek that are, with the New Testament, refers to in using this word power, one of them is the physical strength of power. Just to illustrate that, I thought about the idea of getting the partial team up here, and me taking them on with an arm wrestle, just to demonstrate that, but I thought, no, I don't want to embarrass them, so we'll let them stay seated down there. So there's that one power, but there's another power as well, which is an authority, which is really an authority which comes often with a position or whatever. A couple of months ago, we were driving with one of our sons-in-law, and then out from the side of the road came out this man with his hand up like this, and signaling for us to pull over. The man was dressed in blue, and you're guessing, yes, it was a policeman. So our son-in-law obediently pulled over. It was just a random breath test, and he passed that, and so after a few exchange of pleasantries, we were on our way. But he has this power, the policeman has this power because of the uniform, which is a delegated power to him. Imagine that same man coming and standing in that position the next day, just wearing jeans and T-shirt, and he's standing there, and he holds up his hand then, and you think, how many people are going to pull over and stop? Not too many. The reason is that the uniform gives him a power, gives him an authority, which is backed by all of the police force, the Queensland Government, by society, and this delegated power gives him that authority to be able to do these things. But the word power here is yet a different word, and the Greek word, giving a Greek lesson, sounds like an expert I am, which I'm obviously not, is a word called dunamis, from which we get our word dynamic, and so dynamic is something which talks about action. It's also another word we get, remember those of us who are old people, remember when we were young, we used to have push bikes, on the front of the push bike, on the front wheel, on the fork, there used to be this little thing that we could flick over, they still have them, I don't know what they do, but it used to have this turnaround thing against the tyre, and the faster we peddle, the wires coming up would light up our lights, front and rear, if we were that way inclined. The faster we peddled, the brighter the light. The little gizmo was called a dynamo. Some people are same age as me, or older either. Not many older, but there's a few. So that was the dynamo from this word dunamis. It's also from this same word dunamis that we get about an explosive called dynamite. So this is the word which is talked about here, when you receive power, when does this power come? The power comes with the indwelling spirit. When the spirit comes, you'll receive power, the indwelling spirit brings with him this power, and a power for what purpose? The power is for the purpose of witnessing. You shall receive power, Holy Spirit power, when He comes and indwells us to be my witnesses. Witness, by the way, is another expression word, matush, from which we get our word mata. And so it could also be used in a lighter way of testifying, but it's also the word mata, we need to remember this. Is it many people have been marted, have been put to death, why? Because they love Jesus. But we also ought to expect that when we are witnesses for Jesus, that we need to understand that some form of persecution in some minor way, right the way through, that we can expect that. Now when we look at this verse, there are a few statements that I want to have in the back of our mind. I'm not majoring on these statements, but I want you to have these statements in the back of your mind as we think about this passage this morning. And the first statement is this. Many people are concerned about how many people are in our church when actually they should be concerned about how many people are not in our church. We've got to get away from this myth that bigger is better. And to get away from this myth that the bigger churches are where it's all at. You see, sometimes we always want to think, or often want to think, if only our church is bigger, but no matter how big you are, there's always going to be another church which is going to be bigger. And sometimes we as a church, of a midsize church, like we are, think if only we were like such and such a church, get away from that thinking. Bigger is not better. In fact, we've even been hearing some stories today about some people who are out ministering in areas which are hidden, which we don't know too much about. We don't hear as who often about. And it seems to me from my memory of working with Queen St. Baptist or looking after Queen St. Baptist, travelling this state far and wide, and Australia far and wide, and even the world that there are people operating, ministering in areas, in ministry areas where they often go unnoticed. Nothing's wrong with being bigger, and if we're being fruitful, then we can expect to grow. But get away from that idea. The second statement to keep in our mind is this. Is that some people are not Christians today because they don't know any Christians. But sadly, there are some people, and this is only a very small minority, some people are not Christians today because they do know some Christians. And that's a sadness as well, and we've got to be thinking about that. But most importantly today, I want us to be thinking about the first part of the statement about some people not being Christians today because they don't know any Christians. In fact, surveys show this. Different surveys show different things. But different surveys are showing that most people become Christians through a family member or a close friend. So surveys have shown that somewhere between 75% and 90% of people come to faith through a family member or a close friend. And yet another survey which was taken in 2021 has shown that 56% of Australians say they do not have any friends or family who are church goers. So that once again is something which seems to, which needs to impact us. To realise that while most people will come to faith through a family member or a friend, out there more than half of Australians don't even know anybody who is a Christian. Maybe we are the ones who need to go and introduce ourselves and become friends with those people. And so this brings us to this passage, Acts chapter 1 and verse 8. We've looked at some key words. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you'll be my witnesses. And then what we have focused on in this month of mission, we're focused on these three geographical areas. You should be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. We looked at the first two so far, looking at number three, tried to highlight it a little bit there, just to remind us that this is the one we're looking at. And so these things actually to me present some sort of priority. Our family is a top priority because that's who we're most intimate with. So if we've got family members who are non-Christians, that's a top priority for us to be available to share with them our faith. But then beyond that is our town, our area. It can also mean our network as well. So our network can be like if you go to school, your schoolmates, if you go to work, your workmates to Yeti College, whatever your street, you belong to a club, a sporting group, whatever it is, that is your network. So it can be this whole area of geographical that you're to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, this area, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth, but also socially to be thinking about it in this way, that we are to be witnesses through the Holy Spirit power that's in us, to our family, our network, to awkward people and to everybody. Does that mean that all the world and everybody we don't need to worry about? No, it's still there. It's still a priority. We still need to be conscious and to be aware of that. So today we're looking at, you'll be my witnesses to the Samaritans. What's so significant about the Samaritans? Why did Jesus single these people out, this group of people out to His disciples? Here's the reason why. A bit of a history lesson. Remember the children of Israel? How many tribes? 12 tribes. And the time came when they wanted a king, and so God gave them a king. This king was king. Saul, the second king was king. David, the third king was Solomon. The next king was, well, this is where things started to really fall apart. It's because after King Solomon, everybody wanted to be the king. And so much so that two people emerged and it ended up being a divided kingdom. 10 tribes in the north, two tribes in the south. Two tribes in the north became known as Israel, and the two tribes in the south became known as Judah. And so here were these two, this divided kingdom, not how God intended it to be, but how it worked out. And then what happened in 721 BC, the Assyrians came and overran the northern kingdom. So they overran them, put them to all sorts of things and whatever. And part of the strategy of the Assyrians to disempower this northern kingdom was to move in a lot of Assyrian people to mix in and to water down the Jewish population there. So in time it became mixed marriages, and nothing is wrong with mixed marriages, by the way, but what happened was this, is that with the mixed marriages came mixed cultures and mixed religion. And so rather than keeping pure, as God's people, there started to be this chewing and frying, well, we'll accept a little bit of this Assyrian here, we'll keep a bit of this, and so it became very different. And so this group in the north became known as the Samaritans, who were not real Jews, half Jews and a mixture of religion. And the two became so much so that they were at loggerheads with one another. Tried to think of some of the current things that we might like to think about that. North Korea and South Korea. There's relatives probably across the border there, but they're divided and the two will not get together. Historically, you remember Germany was divided between East and West Germany, and there was families on both sides of that wall, and when the wall came down, the families were able to be reunited, but there was just so much difference there. I might even think today about Ukraine and Russia, is that we visited Ukraine for a period of time, just a week or so before all the war there, of course, but we spoke and heard about what life was like in Ukraine under the Russians, but also the difficult is because there are still families across the border in both directions. So with the Jews, with this northern, or with this Samaritan and the Jews, there's probably still some connection, but there was this great big disconnection. This great big disconnection because there's this breakdown between racial purity, cultural purity, but most importantly, this religious purity, where the Samaritans said, well, we're going to do it our way rather than God's way. So they're opposed to each other, bitterly opposed to each other. No good thing came out Samaritan, Samaria. Jews had to go from here to there with Samaria, rather go through Samaria, around the outside to get all sorts of things like that. So along comes Jesus, and Jesus being a Jew, how is he going to treat the Samaritans? Well, Jesus is above culture. Jesus is about the kingdom of God, not about the kingdom of people. And so we find Jesus' interaction with Samaritans that it's there in an ongoing way. So we find him, well, he heals 10 lepers. One comes back to say, thank you Jesus, and the one who comes back is a Samaritan. You might also remember that John chapter 4 talks about Jesus breaking all the social etiquette, meets with this woman in the middle of the day at the well, who this woman is a Samaritan, and he is talking with her about the kingdom of God. And not only that, he gets to the point of telling this famous parable and it's the parable of the good, what? Samaritan. So where there's these Jews and the Samaritans, so totally opposed to each other at bitter enemies, Jesus, if the kingdom of God breaks all that down and says, I will minister to the whole world. And then we find in Acts chapter 1 and verse 8, he says this, you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and where. But we don't like the Samaritans, but you'll be my witnesses there. Jesus was there ministering to whoever for the sake of the kingdom of God. And while the Samaritans were outcasts, we need to remember that Jesus ministered to many other people who were marginalized, ministered to the poor, to the sick, to outcasts, to sinners, to everybody, tax collectors even. Jesus ministered to them all. And so now Jesus is saying to us, he's saying, folk, it's not so difficult to minister to your family or to your friends, but today it's the Samaritans. To those who you will find difficult to minister to, people who you don't get along well with, people who are quite different to you. And so he says this, and in Acts chapter 1 when he says this, we need to understand this very clearly, that this applies not only to us individuals, but it applies to us as a church as well. Let me give you two negative church examples. Many years ago, I was part of a church meeting and a leaders meeting and talking about evangelism, about reaching out into the community which this church was placed. One of the leaders said, I don't see the need to do that. We know everybody in the church, we're a comfortable church, we don't have any debts, we've all paid up, we're paying our way. Why do we need any more people? Well, I'll tell you why you need more people, because the kingdom says we do. And Jesus says we do. And Jesus tells us as a church to get out of our comfort zone, to go to places because they get too comfortable and say, well, we've got everything together, we've got all that we need now. Another negative example, I was asked to go and meet with some leaders who wanted to meet some needs in their community. So I did a bit of research about that community, found out there was particular subcultures in that community. So when I met with the leaders, I said to them, I said, there's these subcultures here, what can you as a church do to reach this subculture? And one of the leaders responded and said, we don't want people like that in our church. Oh yes, we do. And there's another leader there, I can still see the expression in his face. Just straight ahead said, yes, we do and we will minister to whoever God calls us to. You see, God has called us to be witnesses as a church, to break out of our comfort zone, no matter how comfortable we might feel as we are, but also to accept people who may not be quite like us, who might make us feel uncomfortable, who might stretch us in our thinking, who might be a culture, a subculture, which is quite different from us. But I want to ask you on this personal note this morning about what is your Samaria? That is, what are the awkward places, places where you are outside of your comfort zone? Where might God be calling you? But secondly, who are the awkward people who God might be calling you to? Who are the people who make you feel uncomfortable to minister to people like this? You see, this is what Acts 1-8 is all about. Yes, do it locally. Yes, do it in a wider sense. But yes, also go to those difficult people, the difficult places, to draw them in, not for our sake, but for the sake of the kingdom of God. And so, earlier on we sang those words, ready to do your will. And I want to ask you this question this morning. Are you willing to be called by God to go to these places and or to these people? Well, I want to give you seven thoughts about how this might come about. God expects me to, number one is to be prayerful. Number one is to be prayerful. We've already heard that this morning. Julie said, there's nothing else you can do about this thing coming up, this kids program. Just pray. Don't be praying for people who are not in the kingdom. It doesn't preoccupy my thinking, but sometimes I sit in church and hear cars going by and I think, wonder how many of those people know Jesus? Sometimes I consider the coffee place, having a coffee, and have people walking by, and I can't help but think, I wonder how many of these people don't know Jesus and how do we reach people like that? And to be praying about that is to be praying about, God, what can we do about that? Secondly, to be ready and to be available, ready to do your will. Years ago, there was a young girl, a young lady in our church here. If I remember right, at least she was like a teenager, became aware that a lot of young people used to gather down at the skate park. And she couldn't skate, but she took it on herself because she thought, here are some people who need to hear about Jesus. She went out and bought a skateboard to teach herself how to skate, so that she might be able to go down there and minister to other young people down at the skate park. Now, I don't know the outcome of that. I can't remember the details, but I know she's moved on, she's married, and I know this that even today, she's still involved in a local church, including RE, in a chaplaincy committee. She served as a chaplain. She's still involved in ministry because for the sake of mission. Also, years ago, in Sydney, a part of the study I was doing at the time, I interviewed three men who were all professionals. One was an engineer, one was an accountant, and the other was a school teacher. And these three men and their families in Sydney had decided where they're going to live. And rather than living in middle-class, upper-class areas, wherever they possibly could have, these three families chose to live in some of the poorest areas and working-class areas of Sydney. The engineer said, well, I'm so skilled, or I've got skills in everyday things, and a lot of people in these areas just have no idea about doing house repairs, so I can do all of that. The accountant said, a lot of people living in these areas have trouble with their finances, so I can go and help these people in their family in their setting to do budgeting and help them with their finances. The school teacher said, well, a lot of these kids just don't have too much opportunity at school, so I'm happy to go and to give tutoring to these kids. So here's these families, these three families, who had every right to live in comfort in Sydney, chose to live in this low economic area. Why? For the sake of mission. For the sake of mission. And they said, another byproduct of that is because we're involved in our local church, because we're tired and we get a good income, it gives the church some financial viability as well. You see, this is the samaria for these people. They could have lived in these comfort areas, but they chose to break out, choose to break out of the comfort zone in response to the call of God to be God's witness in these areas. Be prayerful, be ready, be available to be obedient. The open to divine appointments is that for the promptings of the Spirit to go and talk to people, and sometimes it won't be anything, you just have a good chat together, that sometimes God is setting you up with somebody because this is going to be a critical time for them to hear about the gospel. Forcibly be bold, hesitantly, I say that because we don't want people who are just going to be brash and rush out. Peter talks about sharing the gospel, but be ready to do it with gentleness. So be bold, hesitantly, and to make sure that our walk, remember some people aren't Christians because they know Christians, but if our walk is close with God, we'll find people attracted to that, but also our talk as well. Do you need to be a theologian or a pastor to talk to people about Jesus? No, you only need one verse. The one verse, John 3.16. For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Start there, you don't need to go much further than that. Be a team member, that's in brackets because sometimes God sends us out in pairs or in teams, but sometimes it's alone. Six, don't stress. God's not going to put you into a place which is outside of your control in a danger zone. God is only going to be there when He's with you, when the indwelling Spirit power is there to be able to share with others and celebrate when people come to faith. You know, some people, you here today, some of you will lead people to Jesus. And sometimes we need to stop and think, who are the next families that are going to be a part of our church who are not a part of the kingdom? If I can ask you a question this morning, are you ready to do God's will? Are you ready to step out of your comfort zone? Are you ready to step out of your comfort zone and to go to some of these places if God so calls you and to where that might be? Just a few moments. I'm going to put a prayer up on the screen. A prayer that is a prayer of response to what we've been talking about today. Be my witnesses. You will receive Holy Spirit power and be my witness, Jerusalem's duty, Samaria, the ends of the earth. I'm going to ask this morning whether you can really pray this prayer from the bottom of your heart. And the prayer goes like this. Father God, I'm willing to step out of my comfort zone. I ask you to show me my Samaria and give me the courage to depend on Holy Spirit power to be your witness to them, even in this coming week. I want you just to sit with that prayer for a couple of seconds and to think, is that a prayer that I can pray genuinely from the bottom of my heart today? And after a moment, and I'll say when, but if you have prayed that prayer and you're willing to declare that, then I'm going to ask you to stand right where you are. I'm not going to ask you to do anything else, but just to stand. There's a declaration before God that, yes God, I'm willing to do this today. I'm willing to do this for your sake, for the world's sake. I'm willing to do it. If you're not sure, then don't stand because if you do stand, God is going to take you at your word today. And more than likely if God, you pray this prayer, God's going to give you an opportunity in the next few days, the next few weeks to put this to the test. God, I'm ready to step out of my comfort zone to be used by you in the Samaria that you have shown to me. I'm standing here now, not because I'm preaching, but because I pray that prayer. And I invite you that if God is laid on your heart and you're willing to pray that prayer, just to stand right where you are right now. I said I'm not going to ask you to do anything else. If I could around you and see and they'll be praying for you. I'm going to ask Doug, the senior pastor, to come and to pray for us today. Now after Doug prays, we're going to sing F also. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for each person who's responded to you today through your Holy Spirit's touch on their lives. Thank you Lord, you've wired them. Father, you've geared them. Lord, you've given them a field in which to go. And Lord, thank you Lord for their obedient response. Father, I pray for open doors for divine appointments in this coming week. Father, I pray for the strength your spirit will flow through them. Lord, they'll have words they won't even know where they come from. And Lord, I pray that your kingdom will grow. That people will come to faith because of the steps of the faithful. Lord, I pray over each person here today they will know that you are with them. That they will feel your presence. And Father, we'll see what you see. Lord, hear what you hear. And Father, love as you has loved. Lord, is pray this in your name. Amen.