Yoggi Berra once said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it!”  My message today is similar: 

When you come to a detour, take it!

I believe on a human level, that is what we find here in John 4:1-3.

“1 The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptising more disciples than John, 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptised, but his disciples. 3 When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.” John 4:1-3.    

We read the Bible too fast.  I find myself skipping over passages like this quickly and not stopping to really read what is being said.  My main lesson from this was that I don’t have to do all the baptizing, I can let the elders baptize through the ice!

But there is much more than that in this passage.  I see several elements that brought together, make these verses come alive.

First, look at the success of Jesus.  He was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John.

“4 And so John came, baptising in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptised by him in the Jordan River.” Mark 1:4, 5, NIV.

Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John!  His success was tremendous.  His crowds and influence were growing.  What an exciting time!

Just to give a picture of the numbers we read in John of the feeding of 4000 and then the feeding of 5000 men.  If whole families were along, then with the average being a family of four, we would find 20,000 people attending one of the mid-week meetings of Jesus.  And this during the workweek!  

I know what would happen here.  We would be meeting to ask, “How can we follow-up?  How can we train the new believers?  Where are we going to find the space for them to be?  Do we need to add new services, new staff, new programs?  This is great, how do we keep this going?”  

But that is not what happens here. Instead, we find the second element of the story, which is a strong undercurrent against Jesus’ ministry.

Not much is said about the Pharisees in this passage.  But from the rest of the gospels we know that the Pharisees increasingly became the enemies of Jesus.

Earlier John the Baptist had faced them. “24 Now some Pharisees who had been sent 25 questioned him, “Why then do you baptise if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” 26 “I baptise with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. 27 He is the one who comes after me, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” 28 This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptising.” John 1:24-28, NIV.

This seems straightforward.  But there is an undercurrent of antagonism here.  John is on the defensive.  It is instructive to see that the Pharisees had been sent.  Some committee voted to send some people out to find out about John and to challenge his ability to teach.

Then we come to John 3.  Nicodemus comes to Jesus. “1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no-one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”” John 3:1, 2, NIV.

Notice that he comes at night.  Why?  I will make the assumption, though it is not stated, that he came at night because he didn’t want other Pharisees to hear his conversation.  Notice what he says, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God…” That was not the majority opinion of the Pharisees.  This group of people ends up giving Judas 30 pieces of silver to betray Jesus.  They were never supporters of Jesus.

So when we come to chapter 4, this idea that the Pharisees were talking creates an unsettling situation.  Someone must have heard about a meeting that they held, or they must have talked to someone who had talked to someone, and then relayed the information back to Jesus and his disciples.

In World War II, if someone wrote, “the Nazis were talking about you…” and that is all that was said, that would be enough to bring fear into the heart of the people who were talking.  If students hear that the principal of the school was talking about them to the staff, then that might be enough to make them behave a little better in school.  The fact that the Pharisees were talking about Jesus and comparing him to John seemed to indicate a strong undercurrent.

Just what we need, right?  Just when things are going well, something or someone comes by to destroy it. 

You found a really nice person.  You have had a little trouble, but you were working on it.  Just when you thought things were getting better, the person dumps you! 

You’ve been trying to get your finances in order.  You have been saving and penny pinching in order to make ends meet.  Just when freedom is in sight, your car breaks down and needs several hundreds of dollars of work.  Wonderful!

You have been spreading seed.  You see people with an interest in the gospel.  They are starting to ask questions, or else they may even have attended church once or twice.  But now their family or work or something else is indicating that they are drifting away.  Or may be some issue erupts between you that seems to destroy all that was started. As the song says, “So close and yet so far away.”

When things happen to us that we have no control over, I am calling these detours.  These situations make us stop and take a different direction than we had originally planned. 

Sometimes we try to drive through the detours.  We think that detour really means, “go ahead.”  But as detour signs are put up to keep us away from danger, we find that when we plow ahead, we are in more trouble than we imagined.  How many times have we said, “Now that I see what has happened, I realized that I should not have done or said what I did.” This realization comes when we look back and see that all the signs were there for us to change course, but we ignored them.

Some people take a detour sign to mean, “Quit.  Go home.”  They are so sure that they were supposed to do what they had planned to do that when the sign says, “Don’t go this way anymore,” they just quit and give up.

“I tried sharing my faith once.  But the person said they didn’t want to hear it.”  So I never tried again with anyone.  This was turning a detour sign into a U-Turn. 

Jesus faces a detour sign.  Right when he is most successful, the undercurrent is significant enough that he has to leave town.

What Jesus teaches us is this:  when you face a detour…take it!

Jesus did not consider success a matter of numbers.  Though things were going well in one area did not mean that he had to continue doing what he was doing.  He did not grumble at this detour, he took it!  He took this detour with no grumbling, he took it with purpose and enthusiasm. 

In the next verse it says, “3 When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. 4 Now he had to go through Samaria.” John 4:3, 4, NIV.

Notice this.  He went back once more to Galilee.  He had to go through Samaria.  Why?  As we will discover in future weeks, an entire village needed to hear the gospel!  This village would have never heard if Jesus had decided not to take the detour!

When you come to a detour in the Christian life, take it!

The church in Jerusalem was growing and everyone was excited.  They were meeting from house to house and everyone loved everyone.  Their offerings were so high that they had plenty to give to the poor among them.  The love was great.

So what happened to that church?  Great persecution came.  A detour sign came up.   The people took a different road and left Jerusalem, all that is, except the apostles. 

What was the result?  The gospel spread from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria and unto the ends of the Roman Empire.  A detour was not bad, it turned out good for the furtherance of the gospel.

I remember a woman in Bible school.  She was on her way to a Good News Club to present the gospel to children.  She got a flat tire. She was frustrated at this detour.  She was the main teacher and now she was not going to make it.  But then God spoke to her and said, “Do you think that maybe there is reason for the timing of this?”  So she ended up witnessing to the man who came to change her tire.  She led him to pray and receive Christ as his savior.  I am sure if she were here today she would say, “When you see a detour, take it!”

I want to make one more point with this illustration from the life of Jesus.  I want to propose to you that the detour is only in our eye, God’s road is straight!

It was in God’s plan for Jesus to leave Judea and go through Samaria to Galilee at this time.  It just looks like a detour to us because of how we look at the situation.  We see the numbers, the success, the great need for Jesus to stay where he is.  But then we learn that the Pharisees are creating an undercurrent.  We see this as a detour, but Jesus sees this as a straight line.   The next verse shows us that “He had to go through Samaria.”  What is a detour for us is a straight line for God.  We had to miss the appointment, we had to have the relationship break up, we had to go through the financial difficulties, we had to have a door closed on witnessing in one area.  Why?  Because God’s ways are not our ways.  His straight road so often looks crooked to us.

I want to encourage you to continue spreading seed, spreading the word of God wherever you go.  But be excited.  Look again at the roadblocks, the detours that come into your lives.  God may have a need for you to change direction.  Do so with excitement.  God may have greater things for you than you can imagine if you will trust him with the detours in your life.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart.  Lean not on to your own understanding.  In all your ways [even the detours] acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.”