Jesus Interaction with Others

Transcript

The impetus for the study that I want to share tonight is at my work we have done over the years, we've done a series of, you know, for my career, we've done a series of training sessions on communication skills, you know, how to influence people. I'm an FP&A accountant, so my job is to, you know, to essentially take a pulse on what the company's doing, report it back and consolidate information and, you know, really get to the meaning behind what they're telling us the data's saying, so then you build a story based on what the numbers are saying. I know it sounds all very nerdy, but the reality of it is the bulk of it is relationship based and business partnering is what they call it.

And so we do a lot of training on communication skills, we do a lot of influencing people, that sort of thing. And with that, obviously, you know, we layer our experiences in life to our Bible study and our study of the word and something that I find particularly for me, the relevance is to something like preaching, where we're literally trying to engage with people, share the message with people, influence in a sense, you know, you know, provides Christ's love to them, that type of thing, which is, in many respects, very similar to how we interact in the professional world, at least in my career. So like with any, you know, effective Bible study, or even in my own job, the way that to get to the point of what we're trying to look at is we ask a whole bunch of questions. So the way I've structured the class is essentially eight questions. And the questions, I try and answer them from the purpose of getting to the point of what was Jesus's interaction with people like? How did he interact with them? What methods do you use?

And, you know, what can we learn from that? What's the school principal for and how does it ultimately change our life or change our relationship with him? That is the goal. Now, I teach science school every week. So I encourage my Sunday school kids to ask a lot of questions. So if anyone at any point wants to interrupt or whatever, please feel free. That's perfectly fine.

Alternatively, punch something into the chat and we can, I can try and answer it as it comes up, or we can discuss it afterwards or whatever you would like. But with that being said, the first question that I ask is, because it's personal to me, is does preaching make you nervous? Now, for some people, preaching is very intimidating. They're not comfortable interacting with people outside of our community or approaching new people, all that sort of thing. So for me, I'm much more comfortable in this setting, speaking with a group of people that share my belief system and that I know I'm not going to get hostility from or anything like that. Like I'm happy to present to other people I've never met before, more than, you know, essentially sometimes talking to my neighbors or someone I've interacted with at work or things like that, just because it's just my personality type. Now, everyone's different, so maybe you're more comfortable preaching. Now, that being said, Jesus interacted with a whole range of people and he came across a whole bunch of different people. So think about from your perspective, your baseline and apply the answers to the questions as we go through based on where your baseline is, if that makes sense. The first thing, the first question I asked about Jesus's specific interactions was, who started the conversation? I'll give you the type of answers so that you can, obviously you may have other examples, but in nine different cases that I can think of, Jesus started the conversation. The Samaritan woman, the crippled man at the pool of Bethesda, that type of example. More often than not, the other party started the conversation. At least in the record, that's how it's summarized for us. The rich young ruler in Matthew 19 started the conversation. The demon possessed man in Mark 5. Jairus and in the same chapter, the woman with the issue of blood both started the conversation. The woman with the issue of blood is an interesting one because it's not specifically clear on who started the conversation, but I've classified her as starting the conversation because she went up to Jesus and touched him with intent, thinking in her heart and saying, I'm going to touch him and I'll be healed. In other situations, it was triggered by third parties. So the tax collectors and sinners invited to a party by Matthew. And then the Pharisees are like, oh, why is your teacher eating with tax collectors and sinners? Nathaniel was invited by Philip in John 1, and then the adulterous woman was brought by the Pharisees in John 8. So the point of what I'm saying is there's no cut and

clear method of going. Jesus went and specifically targeted people. He very clearly took opportunity when they came up. And ultimately, based on the fact that the vast majority of people talking to him, his actions were the ones that was the impetus for the conversation to start. The next question is where did the conversation take place? Many, many times when Jesus interacted with people, it was in the workplace, which obviously we know relationships we build at work, friendships even. They just come up when you're chatting. James and John were fishing. The Samaritan woman, again, was fetching water. The lame man, I've put it, he was at work because he was a beggar and that was his source of income. So type of workplace. Obviously, many times it was with inside homes, either with family or with friends or someone's house he'd been invited to, whether it was Peter's house, Syrophoenician woman, Zacchaeus' house. The point, again, with reading behind what isn't said, is that very few of these conversations happened in

religious environments, religious settings. Jesus went to where the people were. He spoke to them where they were comfortable. The key here is he was interacting with them where

they were comfortable. He went to them. And that's, I think, for me, a really important highlight of how Jesus interacted. Now, that's the baseline. Obviously, that's the really easy stuff. Now we get into what the next thing, which is what was he discussing? I think the best thing about what was discussed is the way that Jesus had these conversations. He says more about his character and his method of preaching sometimes than even what he's asking about. And the reason I'm saying that is because more than half of the conversations Jesus had, he was throwing questions out or prompting them or seeking a response or having them think about things. This is no different to how God's always operated. You go all the way back to the guy in the video. He's prompting them with, you know, who told you you were naked? Where are you? What have you done? He's prompting the conversation. He's looking to engage, which if you just take a step back, we realize it's all about the relationship he's trying to build. The only way that you engage in conversation is to ask a question that's not singular in response. It's not a yes or no. It gives them an opportunity to fill in some airspace, to feel valuable, to ask a question that provides a response that you can then build on. We know this, but it's only through getting that response that we can possibly connect with people. You understand them by finding out more about them by

getting a question that is open-ended, as it were. The adulterous woman, obviously the questions that were thrown out there in John 8, which we'll flip to in a little while,

that method that Jesus used is as much about the woman as it is about the people listening, because that back and forward, sometimes people aren't comfortable having conversations with us, and sometimes the method that God uses to reach someone is

through overhearing another conversation. So perhaps when you're talking to someone or preaching or engaging in the ecclesia, the method that you're using to interact with people is actually not about the two people having the conversation, but about someone overhearing.

Even to the point of Jesus with his mother and his brothers, Jesus is poking, he's asking questions, and again, it's about the people listening. All the questions in those examples, where are your accusers, who is my mother, my brother, my sisters, it's for the people around, when they're listening, to think about their own responses if they're in that position, if they're asking a question, because some people don't take the question particularly well, perhaps it makes them defensive, or perhaps they haven't really given it much thought, and they wouldn't be of any use having the conversation, so it's to prompt them to self-reflect. Jesus rarely, he did in a couple of occasions, and we'll have a look at it a bit later, but rarely did he push for a closure, it was more open-ended, more think about it, they're either converted in the moment or they go away and mull on it some more and either come back or consider it, and obviously with having the Holy Spirit, he knew exactly what to do with each individual person, but it leads us as well to not force the point. We're in a very tribalist society nowadays where you're forced to be on our side or not, and more often than not Jesus didn't interact with people like that, he gave them the space to think about it, and obviously his character shines through. So, given that, what does his example teach us? For some of us, it's confronting because he took initiative. He also responded to the initiative of others, which obviously also can be a bit uncomfortable for us sometimes. Jesus constantly left space in his schedule, and this is something I really found interesting, he left space in his schedule knowing that he was going to get interrupted. When I was reading through that and I had this realization that that's how Jesus operated, that's when a lot of my classes with my science school students is, please, and again that's why I said it tonight, interrupt if you need to because the best conversations are when you're building and you're coming back with ideas and you're bouncing off each other, and the way that Jesus left space to have a dialogue, yes, the people that were responding to him more often than not need an instruction, but we don't have what he had, and so when perhaps we're having a conversation, we're counted with something, it's really good to have your ideas challenged. Perhaps we're preaching to someone and sometimes God chooses to reach out to us and impact our life through the throwaway comment of someone laying on their horn because you've decided to cut them off in the road or something like that, and that is an interruption to your day, absolutely, but you never know what you're going to learn from someone that God is speaking through in that moment, and so I think being open to what other people have to say, even perhaps if it's contradicting what you have to say, there's always something you can learn, there's always something that, you know, that question maybe someone else is thinking and isn't confident enough to say it, gives you then the space and the response to answer the person that asked it when in the moment God is using you to reach the person that's listening, doesn't have the confidence to ask the question to begin with. So I know this is all very theoretical and that sort of thing, but when you look how Jesus interacted with people like that, it's really insightful and teaches us a lot about just slowing down and being very

deliberate in how we communicate with people. Obviously, we've touched on this already, Jesus went to where the people were, he went to where they were comfortable, again, really important. I know more often than not, we invite people into our homes and they're like, oh, I'm not coming to study the Bible with you in your house, that's kind of weird or whatever, so it gives some thought to, obviously it's strange sometimes to go into their house as well, but it's important to make sure they're comfortable, and I know we probably think about this academically, but it's exactly what Jesus did, so it's been a really good reflective moment for me. And then obviously we've touched on this as well, but Jesus was very specific about building a connection with them, it's all about the relationship, it's all about getting back to that walking in the garden in Eden, that's the whole point of God's purpose with Christ. So that relationship-based approach is by far and away the most effective way to do it. The old standing on a town corner or a town square and just shouting out the gospel, those days are, I'm sure maybe the internet does that for us nowadays, but not as effective anymore really. It's vastly more about the interactions and the relationships that we have, and people, as someone once told me, sometimes our actions and the relationship we have with people, we will be the only Bible that people will ever read back. When we're preaching, it's vastly more than just telling a story or spreading a message. We're interacting with people in a vast range of situations and scenarios, and the key to it is the grounding in getting to know with people, getting to know people, getting to know them where they are, and to be effective. As much as we're told to be separate strangers and pilgrims, being in and amongst our community is really important, and whilst maintaining that lampstand type separation, I think it's a good piece of self-reflection as to am I being separate for the sake of being separate, or am I doing it as intended with the spirit of the guidance rather than the letter of the law, or are we actually being Christ-like whilst developing relationships so that we can be Christ to people? I have a note here about the Ecclesial Hall. I don't know how big your Ecclesia is, but Cambridge, which obviously Jake can tell you about, is quite a large Ecclesia. Sometimes, if we step away from preaching for a second and we just talk about the relationships we have inside in Ecclesia, Cambridge on a Sunday has, when we get a decent turnout, we can have 70, 80 people there, baptized people. That doesn't include all the kids running around. You just don't get a chance to talk to everyone. Again, the method has to be very deliberate. For some people, going to the Ecclesia on a Sunday is a lot of effort. It's hard work. It's the only thing they do, or it's overwhelming for them.

Being purposeful in the relationship, being deliberate about finding out how their week was, instead of just, hey, how are you? and making it superficial, it's how are you? What's going on? How is you and God? How is your relationship with God? And developing that relationship. That is something that I thought of as a thought, because it's something that we're very outward-focused as a community. And sometimes we forget that certainly our own members need just the same level of love and care and thought that Jesus provided to people externally as well. When there is a need, and maybe you haven't thought about this in this context, but Jesus' response to situations, when we talk about interactions, sometimes we think, oh, it's just a spoken word, but his actions a lot of the time when there was a situation speak volumes as well. I don't want to spend a huge amount of time on this, but think about the story on the water when there's a big storm, and they're freaking out, and Jesus is walking on the water. He sees fear. And I don't know if you've ever seen this, but I think it's three times or four times in that section. The words straight away or immediately are used. And what we get out of that is that Jesus is saying, like, he's responding to the situation. Obviously enough, he's not waiting there for them to wallow in it. And that urgency comes through in the inspiration. So take that for what it's worth. I think sometimes we think, oh, I'm just going to let them think about their actions for a moment or wallow

in it for a bit, perhaps. I think it provides us some pause when we think about why, ironically, I guess, pause. But just some time for some reflection, because too often than not, we decide what's good for someone, when obviously we should be leaving it up to God. So the piece out of that is just, if there's a need, fill it. It seems like an obvious thing to say, but that's clearly what Jesus is doing here.

Jesus specifically, and I'm just jumping from theme to theme here because it's so much stuff you can get through. And I think it's really good to just try and hit as many as you can just to think about them. And I think one of them is Jesus specifically goes and targets and calls out. He can identify people who are genuine. And the vast majority of us have some level of intuition. You can tell when someone's interested. You can tell when someone's genuine for the most part. And Jesus valued that. Spending the time with someone like Nicodemus, as it turns out, was a really good, beneficial use of his time. He took the time to invest, and I think we probably do that more naturally. But at the same time, we have to go and be aware and find out who are the genuine ones.

This is a bit of a weird one in the day and age we're in, but not to sound woke as it was, but Jesus was quite culturally sensitive. He interacted with people in the method that they needed so that they could hear his message. I'm going to use a couple of examples to draw this out. Because obviously when we start talking to people in terminology that we know is going to antagonize them, they're going to tune us out. So obviously our reading in John 4 is the woman of Samaria. If you look at the language and how he's talking to her, there's a moment where he switches, but for the most part he's talking to her on the terms she needs to hear. I had another example I was going to give as well, but I didn't write it down. It's super valuable because he can talk in a way that reaches them. I think this example I was going to say was even when he's talking to people about them having spirits and demons, obviously today we know that's mental illness, but he didn't go and say, let me give you an education on mental health and a psychiatric lesson or anything like that. He spoke to them as, oh, that person is a demon. Let me cast the demons out. Now, maybe that's the way the translation comes through. Maybe that's legitimately how he spoke. He spoke about having spirits and demons because that's the language that he knew that understand. Because the point was them to believe in him, not to have a lesson in mental health and psychiatrics. When you just flip it like that, you realize the method that he's using is to specifically go into understanding what the end game is and reach them as effectively as he can without putting any barriers in the way of the end game.

Something that I'm not very good at and some people are and I admire people like that is Jesus was very, very good at complimenting people when it was deserved.

The woman with the issue of blood, your faith has made you well. The woman that threw the mites in, the poor woman has put in more than all. And we might say, okay, yeah, that's all well and good. He was a nice guy. But the point is you would be surprised, again, removing barriers, reaching people, developing relationships, a kind word, complimenting, seeing the value, highlighting the good, even though we're all sinful, we all need salvation. There is still a method that we need to approach when it comes to connecting with people. I think Proverbs 3 has a really good passage, Proverbs 3.25. Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, but it is in the power of your hand to do so. There is nothing wrong with highlighting the good that someone's done, particularly in the interest of building relationships. Maybe you haven't seen this one before, but maybe you have. Jesus loved him. Obviously, we know he went around and interacted with people, but he actually listened to people's stories. People would come and talk to him, and they wanted to share. Obviously, he was very approachable, very loving, very kind. A lot of the time, these people had no one to interact with. I'm sure we can think of situations in our own lives that we could see someone that needed that shoulder to lean on,

just someone to hear their story. Jesus walks into a crowd of people, and he literally just asks a guy how long he's been disabled for.

These little snapshots, obviously, the record is so limited in no doubt all the different interactions he had, but we can pull out these tidbits to say, okay, well, if he's like that with one person, then inevitably he's like that with all the people alike, because this is what his reputation was. He would ask them about their faith, or he would observe something. I think he would find out about what's happening in their life, and people were drawn to him because he was genuinely interested. In one of the work trainings we had recently, actually, one of our leaders was like, I had this old manager, and when you were in the room and they were talking to you, he made you feel like you were the only person in the room. If we can do that in a work environment, we certainly should try and do it in our relationships, in our spouses, our children, our friends, and certainly aspire to do it with people we're reaching out to, or people in our Ecclesia, because when people feel heard, they feel cared about, they feel loved, you have an ability to connect with them and solve a

whole swath of problems where people don't feel heard. I think there's an epidemic of loneliness. Certainly during COVID, there was a massive amount of people who just didn't have someone to talk to. It's wild. Developing the skill of actually just listening, again, the interaction that Jesus had, more often than not, a lot of it was more than just his words.

I'll skip over that one, because we've talked about how he communicates with people on their level. A vital one here, folks. I think of the 40 odd different examples that we can pull out of when he's interacting with people, like over 30 times, he quotes the Old Testament. Now, you'd go, well, obviously, that's the most important thing. But how often when we're talking to someone, how often when we're in today's world, debating or being contradicted or engaging or trying to preach, do we forget to just go back to what God says? Use it as the default. Have you not heard? Has it been written? That it might be fulfilled? This is what's recorded. Again, if we take what limited record we have, this must have been the norm. Obviously, we know it was, but a massively important thing that, unfortunately, vast majority of the time we forget because we can either let our pride or the conversation get carried away or whatever it might be. This is just something to think about as we're engaging with people. This is an interesting one because I don't have a good way of doing it because I'm not Jesus, obviously. But Jesus was not afraid to call out sin. Luke 11, when they're not washing before dinner, that's the story I'm talking about. Jesus just goes, OK, cool. Well, what about your internal impurity? He calls out the judgmental, hypocritical approach. We might say, OK, well, how do you do that? Well, it comes back to what we said before about the relationship that we have. Obviously, someone just walking down the streets doing something wrong and you're doing the wrong thing. Obviously, that's not going to work. But when you have a level of relationship, you have the right form to, well, what do you think about this? And then you can be like, well, and applying the tools that we've gone through so far, well, you can actually say, well, the Bible says this. It's not you that's saying it. It's God that's saying it. And you're OK to point out what is obviously the wrong thing. But Jesus didn't shy away from it. And obviously, his example was that he wasn't a contradiction. It wasn't when he said that's what it was. They'd be like, well, so much for you. You do the opposite. Well, what about this part of your life? So again, a checkpoint when it comes to how we try not to do it nowadays. We try not to have antagonized people cause conflict and those type of things. But it's something Jesus did on a number of occasions. There is a time, there is a space for it. And I think figuring out how in your own life, in your own relationships, you can actually effectively do that is a really challenging thing that we actually have to contemplate when we're applying these

questions in our own lives.

So the other piece that I said earlier, which more often than not, Jesus didn't force a response, but he drew people to a decision, whether it was to think about it or find some sort of

next step. It wasn't sort of a cutoff point. Your mothers and brothers are waiting to speak to you, the example we used before. And he's like, oh, who is my mother and my brothers? When Jesus is trying to get them to a next step or a decision, he's trying to figure out what their level of commitment is. And by asking a decisive question, and this may or may not be something we can necessarily do, but I think the point of what I'm trying to get at is that he never lost sight of what the end game was, which is to draw people back to God. And the way that he does it is by asking a question which causes them to go away and contemplate their life. Now for us, perhaps that might be a little aggressive,

but certainly allowing the Bible to do that when we're working with someone or in some interactions that we have. I've heard people be like, oh, how is it that your family or your church group, you guys behave like this or you seem like such close family or whatever it might be,

those types of either your example or the passage you've looked up,

instead of just having this superficial relationship with someone or you've just gone and been friends with them, you've actually got a clear purpose of bringing them to God. And I think I don't have a solution to that one. I'd be interested to know if any of you do, but I think the critical thing is Jesus always brought them to the point of reflection. That was a long bit about the questions about what can we learn from how he interacts with people from his specific tactics.

Now let's talk about cultural context. So 2000 years ago, Jesus operated in a world where women didn't have a real say or any sort of standing in society. And I think that's a really important basis for the next question, because the next two questions are how did Jesus interact with women and how did he interact with children? Now you'd say, okay, well in today's world, that's a no-brainer, but in the time that he lived, this was incredibly different and something that he certainly, through his actions, called out. Rabbis would, I don't know if you guys, perhaps some of you do, but rabbis would start their words in temple with things like,

I'm thankful to God that I wasn't made a woman, which sounds like crazy in today's world, but that's the religion of the Jews in the time. Women had no rights, they had no financial capability for the most part, obviously there's a couple of different examples of the ones that did, but a husband could divorce his wife for almost any reason,

whereas women couldn't divorce their husbands. Jesus highlighted that the cultural norm of the day, when appropriate to be contradicted was, in a way that I actually can't think of an example where it was contradicted, that the woman was, that they were angry, if you want a better word, that he was treating them that way.

He defied the cultural norms. He interacted with a whole range of people in the same way. I think the way that he interacted with women is a really good baseline for our own personal biases, perhaps, because in the day there were men and there were women, and they were on very different standings, and obviously they had their different sects of religion or culture or nationality, and that sort of thing. But in today's world, perhaps it's something other than that, and it obviously depends on which country you go to, but obviously in North America, whether it's race or whether it's social status or job or income, whatever it might be that may have us as biased towards someone, we need to check that at the door. And that's something that we almost, we know it academically, but when we see how Jesus just bypassed all of that very deliberately, and then went and addressed those people how they needed to be addressed, it's a really powerful lesson for us.

If you've still got the reading that we looked at, that was John Chapter 4, this is a really, we know the story well,

it's a Sunday School story that we have, but I love this as a reference point for how we are to treat people, because there's a few layers to this. Yes, we've addressed she's a woman, and what went with that? She was Samaritan, and their racial and ethnic background was considered vastly inferior to the Jews. She'd been divorced five times, was living with a sixth person, and this time she was skipping marriage. She was in all likelihood disdained by her own people. Jesus obviously knew all this about her,

and he knew, we know the story that she needed more than physical water, she needed spiritual water, all that sort of stuff. The most powerful aspect of the story of the Samaritan woman is that once she came to connect to Jesus, because of all the puts and takes that happened through the story, he was kind, he reaches out, he connects with her, and then he calls out her sin. He does it in such a way that when she comes to the realization, she goes back to the village, she pulls everyone out, and tries to convince them to come and talk to Jesus. And because of the realization that Jesus cut through her own issues with herself, she was able to put her own personal shame aside

and try to bring the village out to interact with him. I think it's a really powerful method or display that it doesn't matter, it didn't matter to Jesus what their background was. Something I only realized, and again, knew this academically, but Jesus decided to show himself to women first when he was raised. Which, when you think about the culture of the day, it reinforces the, it's going to sound a little off topic, but for me it's a really powerful example of why we talk about the rise of Christianity, why was Jesus martyred, and then why would you worship someone who was martyred, all that sort of narrative. And again, why would he show himself to women first?

It's because it didn't matter. It's because he had a relationship with his people, and those were the ones he specifically wanted to talk to,

because he's highlighting the value that each individual can bring, and the relationship that he had with those, obviously those different people and those different women. The way that he interacted with children is an interesting one. I'm just looking at my notes here.

I'm sure you're all familiar with the story about he takes little children into his arms, and he blesses them, and that sort of interaction, but the reality is Jesus interacted with children in such a way that, again, it reached the children themselves, but it was more about the people that were watching. It was more about the people that he was able to reach as a result of his actions and the way he interacted with them, because he goes, you have to have a childlike faith. What is that, we ask ourselves, because when the disciples are telling him to send the children away, he's like, well, no, hang on, you can learn something from this. Their faith is pure, it's unassuming, it's humble, and I find for myself the way that Jesus interacts with children is probably the most powerful lesson of all, because we think of ourselves as fairly, probably more than we should. We think we're intelligent, we think we're Bible students, all these things, which maybe they're true in some form, but God calls himself our Father. The beauty of the New Covenant is that we go from being under law to under grace and going from a father-like figure, the metaphor of fatherhood in the Old Testament, to being called children of God in the New Testament. We are to be like children, Jesus is our brother, and when we visualize God as our Father and we realize that that's what he's put himself in that place before us, he goes from being unattainable to right next to us. Our interaction with him becomes less about how far away he is and how close he is. It goes from being how far away to how close he is. And if we are truly childlike in our faith, we desire to be near him, we desire to be close to him. And so when we think about why did Jesus interact with children the way he did, it should be, yeah, the children are there, but we're told to be like them. And he specifically uses that example to provide us comfort, to draw us in. I think that's the most powerful lesson from this whole study for me. I think I'll wrap it up there. I have a whole section here on the scriptural principles, but I think just reading through them we've touched on the vast majority of them. But I'd be interested to have a conversation if anyone had any questions or additions, because obviously this is incredibly personal to each of us.