Sunday Service for Jan 31, 2021

As per usual, the transcript of the service is below

John 4:4-26
⁴ Now Jesus had to go through Samaria. ⁵ So He came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
⁷ When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and Who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.”¹¹ “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”¹⁶ He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”¹⁷ “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸ The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”²¹ “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”²⁵ The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When He comes, He will explain everything to us.”

²⁶ Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am He.”

John 4:4-26 LIVING WATER
Springford Baptist Church: January 31, 2021.

My older brother Les has, in the past, travelled with a mission team to drill wells for clean drinking water in the West African country of Burkina Faso (one of the poorest countries in the world).

As they travelled to remote villages there, often the people would express that they felt as if they had been forgotten.

With God, no one is forgotten or overlooked and we as Christ’s followers have opportunity to express this in a whole variety of ways to people around us. Right now, living in the restrictions of this pandemic, it is so necessary for people to know that they are not forgotten.

As we are LISTENING FOR GOD and wanting to be used by God, we can trust God to be part of our conversations with family and friends and neighbours. It is not just having casual conversations with them, but trusting God that we can communicate in meaningful ways that they are not forgotten by us or by God.

vs. 4 “Now He (Jesus) had to go through Samaria. How do you understand this? Jews often intentionally avoided the region of Samaria by crossing the Jordan River and travelling on the east side.

Typically they would avoid having anything to do with the people of Samaria.

Yet Jesus recognized that today He would be the means of this Samaritan woman knowing that she was not forgotten by God.

So in order for this to happen Jesus “had to go through Samaria”.

What are the God-initiated interactions that we are meant to have, that we have to have with people?

We see here in this conversation that Jesus has with the woman at the well that He recognizes both physical and spiritual need. This opens the way to talk about the reality of the living water that God has to offer.

vs. 6 Jesus is tired from the journey and recognizing his own physical need sits down by the well.

When a Samaritan woman comes to draw water, Jesus does not allow the issues that Jews and Samaritans have with each other to prevent a conversation.

Jesus asks this woman for a drink and she is surprised.
vs. 9 “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink”?
A Jew would become ceremonially unclean if he used a drinking container handled by a Samaritan because the Jews held that all Samaritans were unclean.

What kind of assumptions or hang ups from the past might interfere with the conversations we could have with people?

Where might our conversations begin and how could they ultimately lead to the recognition of the reality of living water?

vs. 10 In this conversation, Jesus gets right to the point:“If you knew the gift of God and Who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.”

Now is the time of opportunity and then Jesus will be journeying on for other interactions and potentially life changing encounters with people.

Our circumstances are somewhat different with family and friends and neighbours with whom we will have repeated encounters. There is a place for investing and building relationships.

It is often as a result of building trust over time that God does open doors of opportunity for having significant faith conversations.

Do you notice how natural talking about spiritual realities is for Jesus?

This may not seem natural to us, but one of the things we can always be at ease and ready to talk about is our own faith journey-our own story of how God has been real to us and how God has given us strength for each day. There are plenty examples of that in recent times.

What began as Jesus asking this woman for a drink moves into Him indicating that He has something to offer.
vs. 10 “If you knew the gift of God and Who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.”

The only way for people to know what Jesus has to offer is for us to be part of revealing that.

This woman is intrigued by the possibility of living water. The thought of not having to return to the well repeatedly to draw water is appealing to her.

But she still has not understood who Jesus is and what the reality of living water is all about.

Every journey of faith is just that, a journey toward understanding and acceptance. We have needed time for our journeys and so will others.

(vss. 16-18) Jesus continues the conversation with her. This woman’s life is complicated as are all our lives.

Having had 5 husbands and now living with someone who is not her husband is a painful history of broken relationships. This would have caused her to be severely judged by other people. As a result she would have been excluded from others and their interactions.

If we insist on judging other people, how will we have life changing conversations with them?

Instead of judging, we can choose conversations filled with the same grace we have received from God.

(vss. 19, 20) Jesus’ awareness of the details of her life, leads this woman to conclude that He is a prophet, someone speaking for God.

vs. 23 “Yet a time is coming when the true worshippers will worship the Father in the Spirit and truth…”

If any of us are going to come to God and worship Him in the Spirit and truth, we must have an accurate sense of reality. We must be LISTENING FOR GOD!

There were things this woman was misunderstanding, but there was this possibility here of journeying toward discovery of who is Jesus! This understanding came as she listened carefully.

This is at the heart of the reality of living water. Listening and recognizing Jesus for who He is.

Any conversations we have that move toward us and others recognizing Jesus are the ones that will matter.

John 4:39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in Him (Jesus) because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.”

Our closing song is “Fill My Cup Lord”. The chorus expresses: “Fill my cup Lord. I lift it up Lord. Come and quench this thirsting of my soul. Bread of heaven, feed me ‘til I want no more. Fill my cup. Fill it up and make me whole. It is about our own spiritual journey, our own journey of faith and being so grateful that we have lifted up our cups and Jesus has quenched the thirsting of our souls.

It does not stop there! It is our profound experience of meeting and recognizing Jesus that urges us to share who Jesus is and the reality of the living water that He has to offer with anyone who will listen.

No one is ever forgotten or overlooked by God and we can be the means of expressing this life-giving truth, this reality of the living water available for anyone who will receive Jesus!!