SPEAKER_02: Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_02: You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for listening.
SPEAKER_03: Thank you, choir and praise team.
SPEAKER_03: Turn with me in your Bibles to John chapter four.
SPEAKER_03: And while you're turning, I want to call your attention to an announcement for next Sunday night.
SPEAKER_03: We're going to have a special night here at church.
SPEAKER_03: There's information in your bulletin on the homepage.
SPEAKER_03: But I want to give you a little bit of information about it.
SPEAKER_03: Next Sunday night, we're having a missionslash fellowship night, and we're we're uh going to do something really uh incredible, something that we are very excited about.
SPEAKER_03: We have been working with our missions committee and our finance committee, and we have committed as a church to a new mission project.
SPEAKER_03: If I said the Jesus film, how many of you are familiar with the Jesus film?
SPEAKER_03: Raise your hand.
SPEAKER_03: So a lot of you are, a lot of you are not.
SPEAKER_03: The Jesus film is a movie of Jesus' life that was made uh uh quite a long time ago.
SPEAKER_03: Uh and so you can see a little bit when you watch it, kind of some of the old school sort of style, but it's incredibly well done.
SPEAKER_03: The words spoken in it are scripture.
SPEAKER_03: It is a very faithful accounting of the life ministry, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: And it was created as a gospel track, if you will.
SPEAKER_03: And uh it was before the days of now we do things like the Passion and the Chosen and all of that.
SPEAKER_03: This is one of those that uh has been around a long time, but it is really well done.
SPEAKER_03: It is very faithful to Scripture and is an incredibly powerful and moving picture of what Jesus did for us.
SPEAKER_03: And uh it has been used by mission organizations around the world.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, it is currently and has been for a long time uh done in partnership with Campus Crusade International.
SPEAKER_03: If you're familiar with college ministry and Campus Crusade, they've been around obviously for generations and great ministry, gospel, evangelistic ministry.
SPEAKER_03: And they have taken the Jesus film and translated it in hundreds of languages and taken it around the world.
SPEAKER_03: And there have been, last count, I think I read, more than 120 million people have been saved through the ministry of delivering the Jesus film into other nations and other cultures and languages.
SPEAKER_03: Well, we have some folks in our church who have been involved in some of those projects in taking the Jesus film around the world, and so they've connected us with Campus Crusade International, and we have committed to translate, to pay for the translation of the Jesus film into a new language, a people group that has no access to the gospel.
SPEAKER_03: They are less than 2% evangelical.
SPEAKER_03: They are what our International Mission Board would call an unengaged, unreached people group, and we are going to pay for the translation into their mother language.
SPEAKER_03: It is a people group that is in Ghana and then spills out into some of the neighboring areas around there, and we will a we will be able to be a part of taking that film to that people group.
SPEAKER_03: Now that's incredible.
SPEAKER_03: What happens when they take this film out into the bush in Africa or out into the jungles in the country if it's a place where that's happening?
SPEAKER_03: They load it up in a portable uh movie projector and a portable screen, and they take it out into this people group and they pull this meeting together and they turn it on, and many times it's the first time that they've ever seen a movie of any kind of any type.
SPEAKER_03: Now, can you imagine going into a village of an unengaged, unreached people group?
SPEAKER_03: They've not had access to the gospel, they've never seen a movie, and you get to unfold for them the story of Christ and the story of salvation.
SPEAKER_03: It is an incredibly powerful experience to be a part of that.
SPEAKER_03: Uh next Sunday night, what we're going to do is we're going to just show you a couple of clips because many of you are not familiar with the Jesus film.
SPEAKER_03: Uh we're not going to show the whole thing.
SPEAKER_03: We're going to have a night of sort of missions, fellowship.
SPEAKER_03: We'll have desserts and all kinds of stuff because we're Baptists and we eat when we get together.
SPEAKER_03: So it's safe.
SPEAKER_03: There'll be food there, right?
SPEAKER_03: And so we're going to eat.
SPEAKER_03: So what we'll do is we'll watch a few clips of it, and uh, some of our missions folks are going to set it up on the projector that they take out into the bush so that you can see exactly how it works and get an experience of exactly what we're doing.
SPEAKER_03: We are also going to have with us next Sunday morning and next Sunday evening an executive from Campus Crusade International.
SPEAKER_03: Uh he'll be here with us in the morning and he'll talk with us a few minutes.
SPEAKER_03: I'll do a Q ⁇ A with him about uh what the what the experience is like and how many places it's been, and he'll walk through some of that uh Jesus film deal.
SPEAKER_03: Then he'll be with us there tonight and answer quest or that Sunday night.
SPEAKER_03: He'll do uh question and answer and meet with us and answer all those questions and stuff.
SPEAKER_03: And so we are very excited about this opportunity to be a part of taking the gospel in this format into an unengaged, unreached people group with the gospel.
SPEAKER_03: We also have a mission team leaving uh the first week in September going to London.
SPEAKER_03: This will be our first full-blown mission team going to London.
SPEAKER_03: And so we will commission them.
SPEAKER_03: We'll have tables set up for you to get your passport.
SPEAKER_03: If you don't have one, every Christian should have a passport and be ready to go when God calls.
SPEAKER_03: And we got some folks that will help you with that.
SPEAKER_03: We'll have all the dates for next year's London trips at the event next Sunday night.
SPEAKER_03: And so it's going to be a great night for us to come together, have fellowship time as a church family, but really come together around taking the gospel around the world.
SPEAKER_03: And so there'll be some more information we'll post on social media this week and that kind of thing, but really want to just give you a sense of what next uh Sunday night will be like.
SPEAKER_03: We have a film, just a short little video here we want to show you that gives you a sense of the experience when they take a movie into a people group and unfold for them the story of Jesus and the gospel.
SPEAKER_03: Bobby?
SPEAKER_05: I was just awestruck by the number of people that were present.
SPEAKER_05: Probably we would guesstimate about 4,500 people who came to the premiere.
SPEAKER_05: Certainly much more than I had ever anticipated.
SPEAKER_04: They were so focused, they hardly moved.
SPEAKER_04: Their eyes were just glued to the screen.
SPEAKER_00: I thought, you know, God is really speaking to them.
SPEAKER_00: They're not watching a movie, they're having an experience with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He's speaking to their hearts, and they're responding.
SPEAKER_01: You could hear them groaning when things would happen.
SPEAKER_04: And to see the response was truly unbelievable.
SPEAKER_04: To see that they wasted no time initially.
SPEAKER_04: Once the first gentleman stepped out, it's as though they all came.
SPEAKER_01: What is more of a blessing than seeing people come to the Lord?
SPEAKER_01: I cannot think of anything better.
SPEAKER_03: You can just imagine the impact to see unfolded the story from Scripture of Jesus' love for us, his personality, and how he loved people and talked to people and how he healed people.
SPEAKER_03: And then when he went to the cross and paid the price for our sins, and then the incredible moment to understand that Jesus rose from the dead conquering death and sin.
SPEAKER_03: That is what we believe.
SPEAKER_03: And that is the story that that is the Jesus story that we are taking and we are sharing.
SPEAKER_03: And so it's going to be incredible, I think, for us as a church family to be a part of that.
SPEAKER_03: We'll get we'll get the reports back.
SPEAKER_03: We'll be able to follow through what's happening as this film is taken in the native language of this people group through this people group.
SPEAKER_03: And so I hope you'll put on your calendar next Sunday night, come and be a part of that and join in that with us.
SPEAKER_03: It's going to be it's going to be a great experience, a new experience for us, and we are very excited about it.
SPEAKER_03: It is a part of this emphasis this month in telling your Jesus story and encouraging all of us to deepen our passion for sharing the good news that Jesus saves here in the River Valley and around the world.
SPEAKER_03: And so, in telling your Jesus story, I've been in church a long time.
SPEAKER_03: I grew up in church, that's part of my Jesus story.
SPEAKER_03: I met Jesus and gave my life to him when I was a nine and a half-year-old boy.
SPEAKER_03: My parents raised us in church and all of that.
SPEAKER_03: So having been in church my whole life, I've heard a lot of people share their testimony in church life.
SPEAKER_03: That's what we that's the church word we use a lot of times for telling someone the story of how you met Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: And I've heard all kinds of incredible testimonies and stories.
SPEAKER_03: I've also heard a lot of people sort of unfold their story like this.
SPEAKER_03: It goes something like this.
SPEAKER_03: Well, I grew up in church and I was baptized when I was seven, and then I started dating my wife in high school, and you know, she was a cheerleader, and I played for the football team, and you know, it was great, and we won the state championship my senior year, and I was a running back, and I was, you know, and she was a cheerleader.
SPEAKER_03: And then we went to the University of Arkansas and I got an accounting degree, and you know, and they unfold their life story, but you don't really get much of the Jesus part.
SPEAKER_03: You see, it's the Jesus part, that's the part that matters the most.
SPEAKER_03: In telling our Jesus story, the key is understanding the priority of who Jesus is in our story.
SPEAKER_03: It is explaining in a specific and a very tangible way.
SPEAKER_03: This is how I was introduced to Jesus and figured out who he is, and this is how he spoke to my life, and this is how I gave my life to him.
SPEAKER_03: Recently I was listening to an apologetics guy that I really like, and I'm all in on apologetics.
SPEAKER_03: That's a big church word for understanding how we know scripture is true and how we know the gospel is true, and being able to unpack a confidence in the word of God and understanding the theology and scripture.
SPEAKER_03: And so it's very important, so don't misunderstand my story.
SPEAKER_03: And he's a guy I respect and I I really listen to him a lot.
SPEAKER_03: It's really good.
SPEAKER_03: But he made a statement that I just really had trouble with.
SPEAKER_03: I had to pull over in the parking lot at Chick-fil-A and get a milkshake and stop and just think about it.
SPEAKER_03: Any excuse to pull over in Chick-fil-A and get a milkshake is right, you know.
SPEAKER_03: But here I got credit in heaven for that.
SPEAKER_03: That's really awesome, right?
SPEAKER_03: And so I pulled around, I'm thinking through this, and here's what he said.
SPEAKER_03: He said, Listen, you tell your testimony, he said, but listen, that's just your perspective, and everybody has their story, and people don't know if it's true.
SPEAKER_03: You tell your story, and that they just go, well, that's true for you, but I have my own truth.
SPEAKER_03: And he just kind of he kind of glossed over testimony.
SPEAKER_03: And as much as I respect that process of apologetics and him and all that, I just take great umbrage with that.
SPEAKER_03: There is nothing more powerful than you telling someone how you met Jesus and that you stake the ground that you have given your life to Christ and He has saved you.
SPEAKER_03: There is a unique spiritual power in you sharing that I met Jesus and this is who he is, and this is what I believe.
SPEAKER_03: Every testimony, every single testimony, I've told you this before, and I'll keep telling you, as long as Jesus leaves us here, every single testimony is powerful.
SPEAKER_03: Being raised in church, I hear people say things like this, oh, my testimony is boring.
SPEAKER_03: I just grew up in church and I got saved, and I didn't really do anything terrible, and I just kind of go, listen, praise God for that testimony.
SPEAKER_03: Every single testimony is powerful because it is a life changed for eternity.
SPEAKER_03: Every single testimony is eternally valuable because for you to get saved, whether you got saved as a first grader and never did anything terrible the rest of your life, or if you were in prison and got saved there, every single testimony is valuable because it cost Jesus his shed blood on the cross.
SPEAKER_03: Our testimony is that I believe that Jesus paid the price for my sins on the cross, that he rose again conquering death and sin, and I trusted him as my savior, and I gave him my sin, and he gave me his righteousness.
SPEAKER_03: That's why it's so powerful to be able to do something like the Jesus film, and you unfold that for people.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes we forget the gruesomeness of the death on the cross.
SPEAKER_03: We talk about the shed blood of Jesus, but it makes a difference when you actually see the blood dripping from his brow, dripping from the spikes driven in his wrist that hung him to the cross.
SPEAKER_03: And when you actually see an empty tune, to know that Jesus has given his life for us.
SPEAKER_03: Listen, however you met Jesus, you are giving testimony to that truth.
SPEAKER_03: And so what's so important in that story is to make primary.
SPEAKER_03: The greatest priority in your Jesus story, the promise of meeting Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: Exactly how you met Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: So here in John chapter 4, we have a story that illustrates how we make Jesus the primary focal point of our Jesus story.
SPEAKER_03: Now, this is a famous moment in the ministry of Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: If you've been around church any amount of time, you likely have heard this story.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it is referred to as the woman at the well.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus is traveling from one place to another, and he's on a road that takes him through Samaria, which is a which was a place in the center, geographic center of the landmast of Israel.
SPEAKER_03: It was a place where over the generations prior, Jews had intermarried with non-Jewish people all in that period, and they got all this stuff, and so there's this big racial prejudice between Jews and Samaritans and all of this sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_03: They have knowledge and heritage of Jehovah God and the Old Testament prophecies of Jesus and the Messiah, but the Jews, there's a separation between the Jews and the Samaritans.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus comes walking into this town, sits down in a well, and a woman comes with some jars to fill up water at the well, and he asks her for water, and he begins a dialogue with her.
SPEAKER_03: We'll look at that in a moment.
SPEAKER_03: But in through that dialogue, she figures out that he is the promised Messiah sent from God.
SPEAKER_03: And she, in essence, in our language today, placed her faith and trust in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_03: Now, what I want to show you is at the end of the story, as it unfolds the impact of her story.
SPEAKER_03: Here's what the Bible says, beginning in verse 39.
SPEAKER_03: She goes back into the town and begins to tell people what's happened.
SPEAKER_03: Now, many Samaritans, verse 39, from that town believed in him because of what the woman said.
SPEAKER_03: You see that?
SPEAKER_03: Your testimony is powerful in telling people how you met Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: Many Samaritans from that town believed in Jesus because of what the woman said.
SPEAKER_03: When she testified, he told me everything I ever did.
SPEAKER_03: Therefore, when the Samaritans came to Jesus, in other words, she tells folks, and they come out to meet him, and they come out to see him, and people are getting saved because this woman and her testimony is the catalyst for people to come to faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_03: Therefore, when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed two more days.
SPEAKER_03: Many more believed because of what Jesus then said.
SPEAKER_03: And they told the woman, we no longer believe because of what you said, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this really is the Savior of the world.
SPEAKER_03: You see, what happens when you make Jesus the primary actor in your Jesus story?
SPEAKER_03: When you make a priority of Jesus and how you met him and who he is in your story, people come to Jesus and meet him for themselves.
SPEAKER_03: And that's what they're saying.
SPEAKER_03: Listen, we're glad that you told us about Jesus and we came to him, but now we've heard for ourselves and now we've placed our faith in Jesus as our Savior.
SPEAKER_03: Now let me remind you when we talk about sharing your Jesus story, and we talk about your testimony, I want to remind you of the elements of your testimony, of your Jesus story.
SPEAKER_03: This is how you construct it in your mind to be able to share it with others.
SPEAKER_03: And I want to encourage you, as I have before, I want you to be practiced and skilled and prepared in sharing your Jesus story.
SPEAKER_03: If you are taking the online evangelism course that we have set up as a church, and I pray you are, and I hope you are, and we're having folks register every week.
SPEAKER_03: At this point, if you're not doing it, you're out of step, right?
SPEAKER_03: I mean, jump in with us.
SPEAKER_03: Part, one of the modules in there is how to write your testimony, your Jesus story.
SPEAKER_03: But here's what you're basically looking at.
SPEAKER_03: This is who I was before I met Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: This is how I met Jesus in detail, and this is who I am after meeting Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: So just to illustrate, in a nutshell, my testimony, I was raised in a Christian home.
SPEAKER_03: My mom and dad took us to church and all of that.
SPEAKER_03: And just to make it really short, when they would discipline us and train us as children, what they'd say is, you didn't clean your room, you took back to your mom, whatever it was, you beat up your little brother, but he deserved it because he's a little brother.
SPEAKER_03: And they're like, No, but you're still not allowed to do that, son, and all that.
SPEAKER_03: And they would say something along the lines of this quite often, son, this is what is called sin.
SPEAKER_03: You broke the rules, it's wrong.
SPEAKER_03: Sin must be punished.
SPEAKER_03: And one day, when you're old enough, you're going to understand that Jesus loved you so much that he took all of your punishment on the cross so that you could be saved and forgiven.
SPEAKER_03: And all my life they would work through that.
SPEAKER_03: And my brother and my sister-in-law, and one day when I was nine and a half years old, I was in church.
SPEAKER_03: I was sitting in the balcony.
SPEAKER_03: I went up, said hi to my people this morning.
SPEAKER_03: Up in the balcony, I was sitting on the front row over on this side.
SPEAKER_03: I can't tell you what the sermon was about.
SPEAKER_03: Pastor came to the end and he gave the invitation and he said, Listen, nobody ever loved you as much as Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: He took the full wrath and punishment of God on the cross and he paid the price for your sin.
SPEAKER_03: And all that teaching and all that made sense.
SPEAKER_03: And I came down the aisle, I shook hands with a deacon that was right down here in our church, a man named Dewey Burton, friends with my dad.
SPEAKER_03: I said, Mr.
SPEAKER_03: Dewey, I need to give my life to Jesus because he paid the price for my sins.
SPEAKER_03: That's my testimony.
SPEAKER_03: Who I was before I met Jesus and how I met Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: And then afterwards, even though I was saved as a nine and a half year old boy, now I can give testimony about what Jesus has done and how he's changed my life and how things were, and whoever I'm talking to, something that Sounds like it can relate that Jesus happens in their life.
SPEAKER_03: This woman at the well, later on, she'd tell her testimony.
SPEAKER_03: Here I was, I was a woman.
SPEAKER_03: I was I'd had all kinds of husbands and and and living without being married and all of that.
SPEAKER_03: And one day I was going to this well and getting water, and I met this man, and he told me his name was Jesus, and he offered me water.
SPEAKER_03: If I drank it, I would never thirst again.
SPEAKER_03: And I didn't know what he was talking about, and he turned the conversation to spiritual things, and I learned that he was the Messiah God had promised.
SPEAKER_03: And he went to the cross and he paid the price for my sins.
SPEAKER_03: And I met him before that.
SPEAKER_03: I met him and I saw him and I gave my life to him.
SPEAKER_03: And then I understood the day when he went to the cross and paid the price for my sins.
SPEAKER_03: And then he rose again, and I knew he was the Messiah because he conquered death and sin.
SPEAKER_03: Who am I now?
SPEAKER_03: I am in my community telling people about the Jesus that I met and how they could be saved, who she was before she met Jesus, how she met Jesus, and who she was after.
SPEAKER_03: But the key in this part is the middle piece, how I met Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: So let me talk to you and show you from this story how it is that we really make Jesus and meeting him, getting saved the primary part of our story.
SPEAKER_03: I want you to go back and look a little bit about this story.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 7, the Bible says, A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
SPEAKER_03: Give me a drink.
SPEAKER_03: This is verse 7, Jesus said to her.
SPEAKER_03: And she says, Sir, you don't even have a bucket, and the well is deep.
SPEAKER_03: Where do you get this living water?
SPEAKER_03: And then she knows he's a Jewish man again.
SPEAKER_03: She says, Aren't you aren't greater than our father Jacob, are you?
SPEAKER_03: She's referring back to some of that Jewish heritage.
SPEAKER_03: He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus said, Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again.
SPEAKER_03: But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again, ever.
SPEAKER_03: In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up within him for eternal life.
SPEAKER_03: Sir, the woman said to him, Give me this water, so I won't get thirsty and come here to draw again.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus said, Go call your husband and come back here.
SPEAKER_03: See, Jesus knows who she is and knows her needs of forgiveness.
SPEAKER_03: She says, I don't have a husband.
SPEAKER_03: You have correctly said, I don't have a husband, Jesus said, for you've had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband.
SPEAKER_03: What you have said is true.
SPEAKER_03: And she says, Sir, I see that you're a prophet.
SPEAKER_03: Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, yet you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_03: And he goes on to say, Listen, we worship the Father, verse 24, in spirit and in truth.
SPEAKER_03: In other words, you've got to have a spiritual forgiveness to be able to connect with our Father.
SPEAKER_03: And she says to him, I know that the Messiah is coming.
SPEAKER_03: When he comes, he will explain everything to us.
SPEAKER_03: I am He, he told her, the one speaking to you.
SPEAKER_03: Then if you'll skip over with me to verse 28, the Bible says, the woman left her water jar, went into town, and told the men in the town, Come see a man who told me everything I ever did.
SPEAKER_03: Could this be the Messiah?
SPEAKER_03: They left town and made their way to him.
SPEAKER_03: And then we get to our passage where we learn that many Samaritans gave their life because she brought them to Jesus through her testimony.
SPEAKER_03: The first piece in this specifics of how you met Jesus is your introduction to Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: How did you meet Jesus?
SPEAKER_03: You see, you've got to slow down from your life story.
SPEAKER_03: We love to tell the story of how we met our husband or our wife, right?
SPEAKER_03: We love to tell the story about when our kids are born.
SPEAKER_03: We love to tell these moments, you know.
SPEAKER_03: It's fun to tell folks about how I met Janet and how she falled in love with me and followed me around everywhere I went.
SPEAKER_03: Y'all are laughing.
SPEAKER_03: You don't believe that at all, do you?
SPEAKER_03: But listen, the most important thing is how you were introduced to Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: The Bible slows down the story of her testimony, and it talks about how she comes to the well and he is there waiting, and they have this conversation about the water, and she is trying to figure out as Jesus used this physical need to point out her spiritual need and how he worked her through this conversation and got her to where she said, I know what you're talking about, the forgiveness of sins.
SPEAKER_03: You're talking about the Messiah that was promised, and he says, I am that Messiah.
SPEAKER_03: You see, she gives into detail about how she met.
SPEAKER_03: And then you even hear when you get back into chapter 39 and you walk, I mean, in verse 39 and you walk back through that, it's telling us that because of her testimony and because she said, Jesus told me all of these things, she's telling the story of how she met Jesus, and because they are interested in hearing the story of how she encountered Jesus, they came to meet him for themselves.
SPEAKER_03: You see, whatever your testimony is, it's incredible.
SPEAKER_03: It's powerful, it's spiritual, it's eternal, it's valuable.
SPEAKER_03: If you grew up in church and that's how you met Jesus, tell people how you met Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: If you were in college and you ran into someone and you'd never been saved, or you didn't really understand it, or you didn't really care because that's what your parents did, and now you get to college and you get some time on your own, and there you met some person from the BCM or somebody on one of your sports teams or in your math class or whatever you were doing, and all of a sudden they were different.
SPEAKER_03: And you wanted to know why they were different.
SPEAKER_03: And they began to tell you their Jesus story, and it began to unpack why it was different.
SPEAKER_03: That's how you were introduced to the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: Take some time in writing your testimony, how I met Jesus, and really explain this is how I met Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: I will make you this promise.
SPEAKER_03: Again, I've been doing this for a long time.
SPEAKER_03: I've been around church, I've been around and lost, had a secular career, pastored, all of this stuff.
SPEAKER_03: It's amazing how many times you meet someone that their questions are answered in your introduction to Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: You have a moment where whatever it is in your life connects with their life.
SPEAKER_03: I went on a mission trip with one of our previous churches, and we took a team, and we were down in Guatemala, and we had some people on our various ages on our team, and we had a young gal who was in the eighth grade.
SPEAKER_03: She was heading into the eighth grade.
SPEAKER_03: She was a rising eighth grader.
SPEAKER_03: We were there in the summer, and so we fan out, and we're going out, and we're gonna knock on doors and share Jesus and invite him to a revival service at night in the church that we were helping to plant.
SPEAKER_03: And so we go to this first door, we're starting to head out, and she looks at me and she says, Pastor Greg, I can't do this.
SPEAKER_03: I said, What do you mean you can't do this?
SPEAKER_03: She says, I can't, I can't, I can't do this.
SPEAKER_03: I'm afraid.
SPEAKER_03: I can't, I can't, I mean, I'm just a church girl, I don't know, and these people, we're in another country.
SPEAKER_03: I can't, I can't do it, I'm afraid.
SPEAKER_03: And I said, Listen, what did I tell you?
SPEAKER_03: Your testimony is eternally valuable, and God's going to use you, and it's going to be special, and you're going to connect with someone here.
SPEAKER_03: And she said, I can't do this.
SPEAKER_03: And I said, I'll tell you what.
SPEAKER_03: You stand with me, I'll go first, you pray for me, and then it'll be your turn, and I'll be right there praying with you through this.
SPEAKER_03: Watch.
SPEAKER_03: We'll go through this together.
SPEAKER_03: You've already been trained, you know how to do this, but I'll do it the first time to help you, and then and then you can go through and do it next.
SPEAKER_03: So we went over and we knocked on the first door, and we came to this door, and a lady comes and they're speaking Spanish with our interpreter and somebody else on our team, and they're doing all this, and the lady begins to get a little emotional, and she's trying to pull back, and somebody stops, and then they talk to our interpreter, and then they call me up to the door.
SPEAKER_03: I'm thinking, this is kind of a weird, what's going on?
SPEAKER_03: So I step up to the door and they introduce me to this woman, and she is the mayor of the town.
SPEAKER_03: Wife's, she's the mayor's wife of the town that we're in.
SPEAKER_03: And she says, I can't really come to the door.
SPEAKER_03: I can't, I can't talk with you because my husband is in an important meeting with our city attorneys, and we're really stressed right now.
SPEAKER_03: And everybody looks at me, and I said, Well, let me share with you my testimony for just a moment.
SPEAKER_03: I said, My name is Pastor Greg, but I began my professional life as an attorney.
SPEAKER_03: And not only was I an attorney, but I worked for a firm where we represented the city where I am from, and I have been in many meetings with the city attorney staff and the mayor, and I have sat in meetings with the mayor of the city where I'm from, praying for him in those moments.
SPEAKER_03: Would you mind if I prayed with you for your husband and these meetings?
SPEAKER_03: And she said, Please come into our home and pray for us.
SPEAKER_03: And we went into our home and we began to pray, and we prayed for her, and then she said, Please stay, and she brought some refreshments, and we got a chance to share Jesus with her, and she got saved, and the mayor's mother got saved, and the pastor of the church we were planning had an opportunity to share with the mayor later on after that.
SPEAKER_03: Your testimony.
SPEAKER_03: Whatever it is, your journey, there are going to be people that God brings you into contact with that your story connects their story.
SPEAKER_03: We come out, and the young lady that I was with, and she was right there praying through all of that.
SPEAKER_03: I said, Wasn't that awesome?
SPEAKER_03: She said, It was so awesome.
SPEAKER_03: I'm so excited.
SPEAKER_03: And I said, now it's your turn.
SPEAKER_03: She said, Okay, you won't leave me.
SPEAKER_03: I said, No, ma'am, I won't leave you.
SPEAKER_03: So we go to a house, then we go to another house, and this other house, two down, we knock on the door, and it's kind of not really a door, it's sort of the way those houses work in Guatemala, it's like a fence, and you knock on the fence, and the house is kind of behind the fence, and there's this courtyard, and we knock on the door, and this young boy who comes, and he's an eighth grader, we discover.
SPEAKER_03: And they begin to talk to him, and he's not sure whether to let us in or whatever, but these people are really nice, and the interpreter is talking to him, and she knew his family or whatever, and they say, Can we share something with you?
SPEAKER_03: And he says, Yeah, sure, go ahead.
SPEAKER_03: And they look over at the young lady on our team and they call her forward, and she walks up, standing eye to eye with a boy we understand who is an eighth grader.
SPEAKER_03: Now, just to show you how good God knows how to do things, he's got an eighth-grade boy and an attractive young eighth grade girl about to share Jesus with him.
SPEAKER_03: And he is in wrapped attention.
SPEAKER_03: I am praying hard.
SPEAKER_03: I'm saying, Lord, you got to make this work.
SPEAKER_03: This is important right here.
SPEAKER_03: Making a point, and she begins to share, and she says, I'm in eighth grade, and he says, I'm in eighth grade, and they start talking about what classes they like, and she says, I love journalism, and he says, Oh, I want to be a journalist, and she says, I love taking pictures, and he says, Oh, I love taking pictures, and I want a camera to be able to do that one day.
SPEAKER_03: And at that point, they're connecting, and she begins to share Jesus, and he gives his life to Christ right there at the front fence, and we get an opportunity to go into the house and share Jesus with people in the house.
SPEAKER_03: You see, who you are and your story and how you met Jesus is specifically designed in heaven to connect with other people around you who their questions you have the answer to in your journey.
SPEAKER_03: Now you may think I'm making that story up, but I'm telling you that's what Jesus does.
SPEAKER_03: The best way to figure out if I'm telling the truth or not is go out and start telling your short story to people and see if God done connect the dots for you.
SPEAKER_03: I can't tell you how many times we've had people into Baptistry and we tell their story, and somebody sitting out here says, You know, that was my story.
SPEAKER_03: That's my question.
SPEAKER_03: How you were introduced to Jesus will connect in the journey with other people and their questions.
SPEAKER_03: The next thing that you see here is her conviction of sin.
SPEAKER_03: You see, when you come to Jesus, the whole point of what he's done for us is that he understands more than we ever will that sin has separated us from God.
SPEAKER_03: Our sin has separated us from him, and we will be separated from him for eternity and judged for our sin.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus was the promised Messiah because he came to be the sacrifice or take the penalty for our sin.
SPEAKER_03: And when you come and trust Jesus as your Savior, here's what the Bible says that you do.
SPEAKER_03: If you will confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
SPEAKER_03: In the book of Romans, when it's explaining that, the whole point of Jesus died for our sins, his death was a substitute for ours.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus lived a sinless life.
SPEAKER_03: He would never have had to die as a man, but he went to the cross, and there he died, a death that has no judgment attached to it.
SPEAKER_03: He rose again, conquering death and sin, and now what happens?
SPEAKER_03: When I come to him, I can look at him and know his death can pay the price for my sin.
SPEAKER_03: But I must repent of my sin and surrender my life to him and believe that he died for my sins and he rose again to offer me new life in him.
SPEAKER_03: And so here's what happens: Jesus understands and he comes to us and he calls us to repentance.
SPEAKER_03: When you are confronted with Jesus, you will be confronted with your sin.
SPEAKER_03: Listen to what happens in this story again.
SPEAKER_03: Give me a drink in verse 7.
SPEAKER_03: They begin this discussion.
SPEAKER_03: In verse 10, Jesus says, If you knew who is saying this to you, give me a drink.
SPEAKER_03: You would ask him and he would give you living water.
SPEAKER_03: And they get into this conversation about eternal life, and then he says, Go call your husband.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus is not being ugly to her.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus knows what her background has been, and he understands the sin in her life, but he has got to convict her of that sin and have her realize that the reason that the Messiah came was to deal with that sin.
SPEAKER_03: To cause repentance of that sin and trust in him as the Messiah to pay the price for that sin.
SPEAKER_03: And then Jesus takes the judgment for our sin on the cross.
SPEAKER_03: And what happens is when you've given your life to Christ, when you've made him the Lord and Savior of your life, now your sin goes to him and the price is paid, and he gives us his righteousness.
SPEAKER_03: And when God looks down out of heaven at you as his child, he sees you through the shed blood of Jesus, and you have been washed of your sin and you are clean and in relationship and in his presence.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus has to deal with that sin.
SPEAKER_03: And so he points out the sin in her life.
SPEAKER_03: And he says, Yes, you have spoken true.
SPEAKER_03: You have acknowledged what your sin is, but then he offers himself to her as the Messiah.
SPEAKER_03: She said, I know that a Messiah is coming.
SPEAKER_03: When he comes, he will explain everything to us.
SPEAKER_03: And he said, I am he.
SPEAKER_03: And I've come here for you.
SPEAKER_03: When you're sharing your testimony, you need to understand that you had to acknowledge your sin and repent of it and place your faith in Christ as the Savior to be saved.
SPEAKER_03: When you are sharing the gospel with someone, it is not good news if you do not understand that we are under judgment.
SPEAKER_03: The point that Jesus came, he could have just come and walked around and healed people and been great and gone back up to heaven.
SPEAKER_03: But he came because he loved us, because he had to deal with our sin.
SPEAKER_03: And we have to understand we must deal with our sin.
SPEAKER_03: And you can pay the price for your sin for eternity, or you can place your faith in Jesus and He will pay the price for your sin on the cross.
SPEAKER_03: And so in your story, you've got to realize that you're a sinner.
SPEAKER_03: When I tell my story, as I shared a minute ago, even as a nine and a half-year-old, I weave through that the process of the conviction of sin and the understanding of sin.
SPEAKER_03: You've got to bring that to the person.
SPEAKER_03: How you may look what happens in verse 39 when we get to our key passage.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 39 says, Many Samaritans from the town believed in him because of what the woman said when she testified, he told me everything I did.
SPEAKER_03: You see, she is unfolding that story of how Jesus understood she was a sinner and yet talked to her, and yet showed her compassion.
SPEAKER_03: He revealed himself to her as the Savior and as the Messiah who had come to take away her sin, to forgive her of that sin.
SPEAKER_03: And she is telling this story.
SPEAKER_03: I met Jesus and he knew my sin and he loved me anyway.
SPEAKER_03: He came as the Messiah.
SPEAKER_03: He is that Messiah.
SPEAKER_03: He will deal with our sin and give us forgiveness and new life because of who he is.
SPEAKER_03: And your testimony must specifically have that understanding.
SPEAKER_03: Now, sometimes for folks, man, you get it, wham, it happens, and you go, man, I can't do this anymore.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus, I give you all of my life and I repent of my sin, and please forgive me, and my life is now yours because you gave your life for me.
SPEAKER_03: And man, you're saved like that.
SPEAKER_03: Some folks, it's a journey.
SPEAKER_03: That person, it's like walking through a door threshold, and I go from one room to another.
SPEAKER_03: Some folks, it's like walking down a hall.
SPEAKER_03: I begin to hear this story and I begin to ask questions and it doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_03: But I keep walking and I keep asking and I keep listening.
SPEAKER_03: And that person that introduced me to Jesus, I go back and I talk some more with it.
SPEAKER_03: Or that church where I heard the gospel and I go back and I keep coming back and asking questions and finding out more, and I'm working my way down this hall, but at some point I come to the decision point where I have to repent of my sin or stop the journey.
SPEAKER_03: And that happens in the third point when you realize that Jesus is the Savior.
SPEAKER_03: You see, that's what he's trying to reveal himself to us as, as the Savior.
SPEAKER_03: That's why he's working her through this conversation using water and thirst that in your soul there is a thirst that can only be quenched by the forgiveness and the love of God that comes only through Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: That's that conversation about you have to worship him in spirit and in truth.
SPEAKER_03: And she begins to understand we've shifted from H2O to spiritual matters here.
SPEAKER_03: And she says, I've heard about the Messiah, and I believe that he's going to come and explain all this to us.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus says, I am the Messiah, and I am here to take care of you.
SPEAKER_03: I'm here to forgive you.
SPEAKER_03: I'm here to love you.
SPEAKER_03: I'm here to create a relationship.
SPEAKER_03: I'm here to open the path and the bridge to God by you trusting in me as your Savior.
SPEAKER_03: She goes back and she begins to tell that story.
SPEAKER_03: You read it in Scripture.
SPEAKER_03: He must be the Messiah.
SPEAKER_03: Could he be the one?
SPEAKER_03: He is the one.
SPEAKER_03: Listen, he knew who I was.
SPEAKER_03: He was at that spot knowing I would be there.
SPEAKER_03: He knew about my life.
SPEAKER_03: He understood my sin.
SPEAKER_03: And yet he loved me anyway.
SPEAKER_03: He forgave me of that sin.
SPEAKER_03: He is the Messiah.
SPEAKER_03: Listen to their testimony at the end of the story.
SPEAKER_03: Many more believed because of what he said.
SPEAKER_03: And they told the woman, We no longer believe because of what you said, for we have heard ourselves and know that this really is the Savior of the world.
SPEAKER_03: They reached that point as they sat at the feet of Jesus and they saw the love of Christ and the holiness of Christ, and they were convicted of their sin, and they saw him love them through that and despite of that.
SPEAKER_03: And they understood that he was God's gift to pay the price for their sins.
SPEAKER_03: And they said, We believe in him as the Savior.
SPEAKER_03: And so you need to explain.
SPEAKER_03: I gave my life to Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_03: I surrendered my life to him.
SPEAKER_03: I repented of my sin.
SPEAKER_03: Whatever your words are, you need to give that testimony that my life is not mine anymore.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus paid the price for my life and praise God He did.
SPEAKER_03: And now I'm a child of God.
SPEAKER_03: I've been adopted in the family of God.
SPEAKER_03: My sins are forgiven.
SPEAKER_03: God has a purpose in my life.
SPEAKER_03: God is using me.
SPEAKER_03: Whatever your testimony is, what happened to you after you were saved, in order for you to share the gospel, you need to tell people how you met Jesus, how you were introduced to the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: The conviction of sin that you understood as you were confronted with Jesus, and your realization that he's the Savior.
SPEAKER_03: You can take that grid, and in pretty much any testimony in Scripture, you can walk it through that.
SPEAKER_03: Andrew, when he asked and invited people to come to Jesus, you read it, it's there.
SPEAKER_03: The guy filled with all the demons, they refer to themselves as legion in this man.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus asked him to stay after he'd healed him and forgiven him and saved him, to stay in his community.
SPEAKER_03: And you can read through that.
SPEAKER_03: The Apostle Paul, when you read his testimony, you understand, man, I met Jesus on the road to Damascus.
SPEAKER_03: This is what I was doing.
SPEAKER_03: This is who I was.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus confronted me there, and I was confronted with my sin.
SPEAKER_03: When he wrote to Timothy, he said, I was the chief of all sinners.
SPEAKER_03: And then you understand he gave his life to Jesus and he acknowledged that he was the Savior.
SPEAKER_03: Every one of those testimonies in Scripture, you read through them and you follow that grid.
SPEAKER_03: And then I want to encourage you, because God has someone in your path, their journey has questions answered in your journey.
SPEAKER_03: Your journey is a guide in their journey.
SPEAKER_03: That's why God has brought you in their path.
SPEAKER_03: How can I know that?
SPEAKER_03: Well, this is the impact of what happens.
SPEAKER_03: When you introduce them to Jesus, this is one of my new favorite scriptures in all of the Bible.
SPEAKER_03: You hear the testimony of these people because she shared how she met Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: They met Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: The reality of this testimony, when she explained this is who Jesus is, and he is the Messiah, and they came and they sat at the feet of Jesus and they looked him in the eye and they heard his teaching and they saw his holiness and they understood their sin and they understood their forgiveness.
SPEAKER_03: They gave their lives to Jesus and they said, Listen, we didn't do it just because of you.
SPEAKER_03: You may have gotten us here, but we saw, we heard, and we believed.
SPEAKER_03: And when you share your testimony, church family people will believe.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe you have failings in your life that are a struggle and Jesus saved you, and he's going to put somebody else in your life that needs to hear that testimony that Jesus forgives.
SPEAKER_03: Whatever it is, I want you to have the experience to hear someone say, Yeah, you told me about it, but now I've met him, and now I believe he is the Savior.
SPEAKER_03: I want you to bow your heads.
SPEAKER_03: We're going to go into a time of invitation.
SPEAKER_03: I've shared the gospel as clearly as I can through the testimony of this woman and my testimony and Paul and others.
SPEAKER_03: And if you've never trusted Christ in your Savior, in just a moment, I'm going to pray.
SPEAKER_03: God's people are going to stand and sing a testimony.
SPEAKER_03: And you can give your life to Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: How you met Jesus can start right here in this story.
SPEAKER_03: Or however it is that you got here, or who invited you, or however you were introduced to him, today can be the day that you met him as your Savior.
SPEAKER_03: If you're watching online or by television, today can be the day right there in your home that you can give your life to Jesus and trust him to pay the price for your sin.
SPEAKER_03: If you're already a Christian, I'm going to invite you again, make a commitment to prepare yourself to share your story.
SPEAKER_03: Write out your testimony this week.
SPEAKER_03: Join on that online class.
SPEAKER_03: You can pick up the sheet with a QR code on the way out or go to our homepage as a church and click on the link.
SPEAKER_03: Prepare yourself to share your story.
SPEAKER_03: Make a commitment today to share Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to pray, and God's people are going to stand and sing.
SPEAKER_03: And if you need Jesus, I want to invite you to come.
SPEAKER_03: If you want someone to pray with you, you come.
SPEAKER_03: Lord, we thank you that Jesus came and revealed Himself as the Savior.
SPEAKER_03: He went to the cross and died for our sins and rose again, conquering death and sin.
SPEAKER_03: He not only forgives us, but he gives us the opportunity to be a part of advancing the gospel.
SPEAKER_03: He lets us participate in telling the story of Jesus that he saves.
SPEAKER_02: We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.
SPEAKER_02: Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for listening to chapter and first, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.