John 4:1-26
Hi guys, Blessed happy family day!
We're going to be studying John 4:1-26 today. Please read through it.
Key takeaways from today's reading
1) Jesus Christ offers us living, thirst quenching water and a fountain of life
2) God seeks people who worship Him in spirit and in truth- these are the true worshippers in whom He delights in
First ask the youths to read John 4:1-26.
Next, give them the background story: Jesus had left Judea and was on his way back to Galilee. There were 3 possible routes he could take to make such a journey, but he chose the one that went straight through Samaria. Why? because he was on his way to meet a Samaritan woman, and lead her into saving faith (John 4:4).
It is important to know who the Samaritans are. They were the remnant of the northern Jewish kingdom who had intermarried with foreigners after the chiefs and nobles had been carried into exile in 729 BC. They had once built a separate worship place on their own Mt. Gerizim and they rejected all of the Old Testament except their version of the first five books of Moses. The animosity toward Jews was centuries old.
With that, we can begin.
Jesus walks right into this hostility, sits down, and asks for a drink (v. 7). The woman at the well is amazed that Jesus would speak to her. "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" Instead of answering her directly, Jesus shifts the focus of her amazement up a level. He says (in v. 10), "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." Jesus says that the really amazing thing is she is not asking him for water. He calls it living water and he calls it the "gift of God."
But the woman doesn't rise very high. Her background has not made her a prime candidate for spiritual insight. She was simply enslaved to the flesh. Her spirit was dead. She simply says (vv. 11–12), "How can you give me water when you don't have a bucket? And if you want me to drink water that doesn't come from Jacob's well, then you must think you're greater than Jacob. Well, if this water was good enough for Jacob, it's good enough for me." She's not on Jesus' wavelength yet at all.
So Jesus again lifts the level of amazement (vv. 13–14): "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
But probably both these answers are true—that Jesus' teaching satisfies your thirst and makes you a fountain of life, and that the Holy Spirit satisfies your thirst and makes you a fountain of life. Jesus kept the Word and Spirit together. For example, in John 14:26 he says, "The Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said." The work of the Spirit of Christ is to make the Word of Christ clear and satisfying to the soul. When we come to Christ to drink, what we drink is truth—but not dead, powerless facts. The Spirit and the Word unite to slake our thirst and make us a fountain of life. (See 1 Thessalonians 1:5; 2:13.) The word of promise and the power of the Spirit are the living water offered to the Samaritan harlot. (a harlot is a prostitute or promiscuous woman.)
And this very same living water is offered to us too. And let us take heart that this very water, is a gift of God, offered to all who believe, no matter how sinful one may feel he/she is. This is the hope we can have in our God- the hope that a worldly, sensually-minded, unspiritual harlot from Samaria can become—not just saved (which would be wonderful enough)—but a fountain of life. She can be used to give life. And so can we if we turn from our sin, and keep drinking, deep at the well of Jesus' words.
Key takeaway 1: Jesus Christ offers us living, thirst-quenching water and a fountain of life.
Let us claim it for ourselves, by God's grace :D.
Okay, lets move on to Key takeaway 2: True worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
Jesus responds to the woman's question about the place people ought to worship by replying that how and whom (v19-24) we worship are vastly and ultimately more important than where we worship.
v23: "But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth." The two words, spirit and truth, correspond to the how and the whom of worship.
So what does 'in spirit' mean?
Worshiping in spirit is the opposite of worshiping in mere external ways. It's the opposite of formalism and traditionalism.
And what does 'in truth' mean?
Worshiping in truth is the opposite of worship based on an inadequate view of God.
Together the words "spirit and truth" mean that real worship comes from the spirit within and is based on true views of God. Worship must have heart and worship must have head. Worship must engage your emotions and worship must engage your thought. Truth without emotion produces dead orthodoxy and a church full of unspiritual fighters. Emotion without truth produces empty frenzy and cultivates flaky people who reject the discipline of rigorous thought. True worship comes from people who are deeply emotional and who love deep and sound doctrine.
Taken from John Piper's sermon on God Seeks People to Worship Him in Spirit and in Truth
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