Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro:

Relentless

Twins plotting different ways around me

Watching Luke try to learn something

What we find to be true in Scripture and our passage tonight is no exception, is that Jesus is relentless in His pursuit of those the Father has given to Him. 

Body:

Read John 4:1-15

The journey from Judea to Galilee would have entailed a three-day walk for Jesus.

Illustration: My wife and I walked 7 miles when we were planning on 3 or 4.

 Jesus initiates contact with a woman , and a Samaritan woman at that.

The Samaritans were outcasts from the Jewish community.

They were considered half-breeds by the Jews because their race emerged from the unlawful intermingling of the Israelites with the Canaanites

2 Kings 17:24-26 24 And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel.

And they took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities. 25 And at the beginning of their dwelling there, they did not fear the Lord.

Therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them.

26 So the king of Assyria was told, “The nations that you have carried away and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the law of the god of the land.

Therefore he has sent lions among them, and behold, they are killing them, because they do not know the law of the god of the land.”

There is also evidence from Josephus (himself a Jew) that they supported the Greeks during the reign of Antiochus IV, one of the great persecutors of the Jewish people.

Josephus even claims that the Samaritans willingly allowed Antiochus to dedicate their house of worship to Zeus.

They had their own quasi-Jewish religiosity wherein they observed the Torah but nothing beyond that

The Samaritan worshipped at Gerizim and considered Jerusalem and the temple to be illegitimate.

So for this woman, and John’s audience, it would be shocking to find Jesus initiating contact with this woman of Samaria.

Jesus initiates contact strategically setting up a conversation that would reveal her need and His provision.

Thirst is one of the more intense of our human feelings, and it is shared across all of humanity no matter one’s status, wealth, color, language, religion, size, or shape.

Everyone thirsts.

Illustrate: Treadmill in the garage when it’s 95 outside creates quite a thirst.

In the Scriptures thirst is often used as a metaphor for spiritual longing.

Psalm 42:2 (ESV) — 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When shall I come and appear before God?

Psalm 63:1 (ESV) — 1 O God, you are my God; earnestly 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.

Isaiah 55:1 (ESV) — 1 “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Matthew 5:6 (ESV) — 6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Jesus seized upon the context of His encounter with this woman to try to lead her to understand her greatest need, a spiritual thirst that could only be satisfied in Him.

And just like he did this for the woman at the well, God always takes the initiative in drawing his people to realize their need for him.

P1: Notice Jesus Initiates the Interaction (vv.

1-15)

Illustrate: Dude Perfect’s Cory Cotton initiated the conversation and offered to take a picture with our kids.

This is the God of the Universe in the flesh initiating this life-changing interaction with this woman.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 declares that God has put eternity in the heart of every man.

The problem is that man has forsaken the eternal God and instead looked for satisfaction in the temporal.

Jeremiah 2:13 (ESV) — 13 for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Illustrate: Focal Point Tournament was hot, and we were searching for the next cooler with water bottles.

I remember playing in AZ and it being so hot even the nasty ponds on the golf course would look appealing.

But no one would choose to drink scummy pond water over fresh clear water from a water bottle.

Jesus was offering this woman “living water”

Jeremiah 17:13 (ESV) — 13 O Lord, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you shall be put to shame; those who turn away from you shall be written in the earth, for they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living water.

Zechariah 14:8 (ESV) — 8 On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea.

It shall continue in summer as in winter.

John 7:38 (ESV) — 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’

”

Isaiah 44:3 (ESV) — 3 For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.

Revelation 22:1–2 (ESV) — 1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month.

The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Jesus initiated contact with this woman, and seized upon a physical need to draw her into the realization of her spiritual need.

Everything a person turns to for satisfaction apart from Christ will leave him thirsty again

Ecclesiastes is all about this

It’s only in Christ that our thirst will be satisfied

Isaiah 12:2–3 (ESV) — 2 “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.”

3 With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

Jesus met this woman where she was, knew her greatest need, and initiated an interaction with her that would transform her life by offering her the satisfaction she really needed.

END P1

Illustrate: In Star Wars Episode 6 there’s a scene where Fin has survived a crash landing and stumbles into the town nearby desperately in search of water.

He asks and is rebuffed by multiple people until he finally sees a water trough where some gigantic alien cow-like creature is drinking its fill.

Fin, so desperate for something to quench his thirst falls on his knees and begins to drink the filthy, slobber-saturated, bug-covered water that this creature was drinking as well.

The point is, none of us would choose that if we had the option to choose crisp, cold, clear, flowing water from a mountain spring.

Much like Nicodemus and the new birth, this woman doesn’t track with Jesus from the physical world to the spiritual world, so Jesus changed his approach.

Earlier we saw Jesus’ humanity as he sat down being tired from his journey, but here we see His divinity as He uses His omniscience like the scalpel from Hebrews 4 to reveal this woman’s sin problem.

We all have these, and if Jesus had met us there in Samaria by the well he would have gone after whatever we sought after for satisfaction before Christ.

We already read Jeremiah 2:13 where the prophet called out Israel for looking for water in broken cisterns, in alien cow-troughs.

These broken-cisterns are the sins that promise to satisfy us, fulfill us, make us happy, keep us safe, etc.

The problem with a broken cistern is that it holds no water, or what little it does hold is a stagnant, silt-laden pool of sludge.

Again, given the choice between the living waters and these broken cisterns, we would be fools to choose the cisterns.

Jesus continued his pursuit of this woman by drawing out her broken cisterns, and so often he does that in our lives as well, not to make us painfully ashamed, but to lead us to forsake them for the living water found in Christ.

P2: Forsake Your Broken Cisterns of Sin (vv.

16-18)

Part of this woman’s broken cisterns involved this trail of broken and immoral relationships from which she had sought that satisfaction and happiness and security.

In turning to JESUS, the fountain of living waters, it is necessary that we repent from these broken cisterns and leave them behind.

Isaiah 55:6–7 (ESV) – 6 “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; 7 let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

Jesus had changed the topic of conversation, but He was still leading this woman to the same conclusion: He alone is the soul-satisfying source of life, the only worthy object of our faith our trust our hope for the eternal longings created within us to be satisfied.

Y’all, the Christian life is a life of constantly forsaking these broken cisterns.

Martin Luther on always repenting: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said ‘Repent,’ he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.”

Even though we possess Christ, the fountain of living-water, we can be tempted by this world to draw from the broken cisterns that lie all around us.

The devil and his legions specialize in hiding these cesspools behind the mirages of sex, drugs, alcohol, materialism, finances, family, kids, grandkids, etc.

And here’s the thing: Sin will satisfy temporarily.

This woman had found some satisfaction in these relationships otherwise she would have ceased pursuing them long ago.

But sin will always leave one thirsty for more.

The water of the pleasures of sin will run out just as the stagnant waters of a broken cistern will leak and evaporate away until there is nothing less.

Jesus was going to bring this woman to the realization that he was what she truly needed.

He was going to win her to himself, and that’s why his pursuit was so relentless.

Jesus wants to win you to himself as well, and his desire is that you turn from your broken cisterns, that you repent from your sin, and place your faith in him as your source of joy, of purpose, of meaning, of life.

Every day you step into this world where there are mirages promising what only Christ can truly provide.

Be on guard, and forsake any inclination you have to draw water from these broken cisterns.

END P2

Read John 4:19-26

Recap: Background of the Jewish/Samaritan debate surrounding the physical place of worship

This woman was after two things:

She wanted to get the attention off her sin

She recognized this was a significant prophet and wanted his take on this issue

Jesus, in his patient grace, condescended to this woman and her line of questioning.

He didn’t chastise her for deflecting or even demand that she deal with the other issue first.

In his relentless pursuit of this woman, he continued to meet her where she was.

His answer: The Jews got it right.

True worship of the Lord is not about a building, it’s not about a particular location, it’s not about a tradition, it’s not about a religious site.