Do you think it's a good idea to be a man?

Does the thought of talking to other people about Jesus intimidate you?

If so, you're not alone.

And on Truth For Life weekend, we're going to learn why evangelism doesn't need to be a big production of prepared speeches or going door to door and handing out tracks.

Alistair Begg is teaching from John chapter 4 today, but he begins by explaining how Jesus ended up talking with a Samaritan woman.

So John says Jesus had to go through Samaria.

One possibility is that he had to go because he had to go. He was in a hurry. He wanted to get to where he was going quickly.

He wasn't going to fool around, going on the long journey, and he had to go through there.

I think that's highly unlikely. I'll address that now as we come to the third aspect of context, which is to view the verses not simply in a historical context, but in a theological context.

I don't let anybody be put off by that word. It's a kind of high-faluting sounding word, but it simply means that which deals with God. If geography has to do with places and people and history has to do with times and seasons, theology has to do with what we know of God, what we know of ourselves, and what the implications are of those two things coalescing.

We need to set it in a theological context. Let's just stay then with this idea of the necessity of Jesus going through Samaria. He had to go through Samaria.

I think the answer to that has probably little to do with time, and it has everything to do with the nature of the mission of Jesus.

Jesus is seen leaving Judea. At a time when, apparently, he was being very, very successful. The Pharisees were concerned that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John.

The ministry was exploding. More and more people were seeing his miracles, hearing his words, getting baptized, following him. And Jesus says to his disciples, that's it. We're out of here. We're going to Galilee.

This is him, right? You would assume that since everything was going so well, the urgency would be, now let's just capitalize on this. Let's develop this.

But no, Jesus says, we're going. How do you understand that? Only in terms of the fact that Jesus was working within the framework of if you like a divine calendar.

He did not want any kind of premature crisis in Judea to move forward the timing of what he knew would be his eventual demise.

And he resists this all the way through the gospels. Whenever people are prepared to come and make him king, for example, he's gone.

When people come and they think they're going to shut him down, he's gone. Why? Because he knew that he was moving towards a point in time.

In the wedding at Cano of Galilee, when his mother comes to him and says, we've got a bit of problem here with the drink situation. Jesus says, woman, my time has not yet come.

By the time he gets to John 17, he says in his high priestly prayer, father, the time has come glorify me now with the glory that I had with you before I ever came into this time space capsule.

And so what we see here in Jesus in this event in Samaria is Jesus recognizing the fact that he was there according to verse 34 to do his will and to finish his work.

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