Queen's Road Cell

Good morning church, and a warm welcome to the boys/girls from the Boys’ Brigade/Girls’ Brigade who are here for their enrolment service today. This morning our scripture text is taken from a famous passage that many would be familiar with, one where Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman at a well. The reason why I chose this text today is because this passage always reminds me about the power of encountering Jesus. For non-believers, the first encounter with Jesus is always transformative, and leaves people changed. For believers, there are lessons to be learnt about Jesus’ approach to evangelism and additionally, to not forget to come to Jesus and to meet Him in His word regularly. As the passage is long, I will be reading the Scripture passage for us. Let us listen to God’s word.  4  Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John   2  (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples),

We looked at John 4:27-42 and noted that the passage did not say much about the theological points mentioned in the study material. There is certainly Jesus' claim that He was 'sent' (v. 34) and that He was acknowledged as 'Saviour of the world'. But like all of Jesus' interactions with individuals in the gospels, the full range of gospel truth is not presented.We read instead of how Jesus was impressed with the faith of individuals, or that they testified to His work in their lives (e,g " once I was blind but now I see"). It seems that they were attracted to the Person of Christ.That is something worth remembering when we share the gospel - we are not getting people to agree to a set of facts. We are introducing them to Jesus as One who is infinitely lovely and worthy of being followed unconditionally. The Samaritan woman evangelized by saying, "Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did" (v.29). She introduced her village to a Person.

Today half of the cell went to listen to Don Carson. So we decided to do something different with the other half! We did the Giftworks spiritual gifts inventory and asked ourselves the question: "How would would we prepare to lead the study scheduled for today?" (i.e. What principles and practices would be helpful if one were to prepare to lead a small group in this study?) We identified the following: 1. Read the scripture passage (Jn 4:27-42 here) carefully and seek to understand it before looking at the study material. Scripture (= the Word of God) trumps study material (= the word of man) in importance. The Bible cannot be wrong. Study materials, on the other hand, can be badly written. 2. Doing word study in the original language (Greek here) carries risks of the leader setting himself/herself above his/her group members. Knowledge of the original language should not get in the way of inspiring group members to say to themselves, "I can understand the Bible fo