Jesus and the Woman at the Well

September 10, 2006
Conversations with Jesus that Led to Discipleship: The Woman at the Well
from John 4:7-15 and Psalm 33:1-3 (for music appreciation)

"Jesus came that we may have life, and have it to the full." – John 10:10

My sermon outline:

• Introduction to September Series: Conversations with Jesus that Led to Discipleship. We'll look at Nicodemus, the Woman at the Well, Saul on the road to Damascus, and Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection. What did Jesus say and what’s it to us?

• So I’ve had water on my mind (Jesus just talked about living water). For the following trivia and additional interesting things, google "water trivia" (try googling "dihydrogen monoxide" too - that's fun)
The human brain is 75% water, a human being is 2/3 water, 80% of planet covered with water. This water was here when the earth began. Water spends about 97% of its time in the ocean. Human should have 2 qts a day for good health, yet a quarter of the world does not have adequate water access, and millions die every year for lack of good water. You can live a month without food but only about a week without water. Need for water is greater than need for food.

• Without water there simply can be no life.

• As our physical bodies need water, our souls need God. Rick Warren writes in The Purpose Driven Life that since we are created for God we cannot function without God, we run on God, on the living water that God provides. The human heart thirsts for something that can only be found in Jesus.

• There is a God-shaped hole in every one of us, that can only be satisfied when it's filled with God. Lives are wasted trying to fill that hole, quench that thirst with alcohol or drugs, with work or sex, with gambling or porn, none of these fill the God-shaped hole, none provides lasting satisfaction or quenches thirst.

• Psalm 63:1 O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

• Jesus tells the woman about living water, about being the source and about being the continual supply: (those who drink will never be thirsty again, will never be in need again; the water I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life) Thanks be to God that the very thing we need to survive God provides in continual and eternal abundance!

• As said last week from Romans 10:14 how can people come to knowledge of this water unless they are told? We are lighthouse, it is our duty, priviledge and calling to show people the way.

• Let’s look at the way Jesus talked to this woman:

• Here’s a Jewish man initiating conversation with a foreign woman in a time and place when men & women didn’t just “talk” and neither did Jews & Samaritans. It was the middle of the day, not the typical time to draw water; it’s been suggested that this woman was ostracized even by her own people. Jesus initiates a conversation anyway. Not hindered by man-made social conventions or worried about “what will other people think if they see me talking to this person?”
It’s strange, the unwritten rules we have. I was at the airport, going to pick up my mom, waiting outside the gate, people from different flights are coming out. I asked a guard "Do you know what flight this is?" He said "No, but you can ask them!" I walked away, and heard him say to another guard "How come everybody always does that?" and then to a passerby "Hey, what city did you just come from?"

• Not only does Jesus talk to this woman as a person, he makes a simple request: Will you help me? Will you do what you’re already doing for me? Nothing fancy or contrived...

• Jesus then uses intrigue to invite the woman into deeper conversation (yesterday at a fair lunch table a woman asked me "do you have a church preference?" I keep my ears open for clues)

• Jesus offered something needful and relevant

• As our bodies need 2qts of water a day for physical health, do not neglect the living water your soul needs every day

• If we will meet people where they are as Jesus meets us where we are, we can introduce them to the one who satisfies our deepest longings and show the way to life abundant



- Pastor Kerry
This Sunday: Cool and clear. 72 in worship. Dedication of piano and music ministries
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