Sermon Tone Analysis

There are four questions, questions that I believe most of us have or have had in common with the Woman at the Well, that are driving the woman’s responses to Jesus.

John 4:4-29, 39-42 (NIV) \\ 4 Now he 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 the sixth hour.

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 flocks and herds?” 13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.

Indeed, the water I give him will become in him 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 fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

21 Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, 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 spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in 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 who speak to you am he.” 27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman.

But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” 28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did.

Could this be the Christ?”…….39

Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.”

40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days.

41 And because of his words many more became believers.

42 They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”[1]

I.         Growing up in Sissonville and my experience of riding through Orchard Manor when I was a kid growing up in the turbulent sixties.

A.     That’s the closest thing I have to identify with how Jewish people felt about traveling through Samaria.

1.      Samaritans and Jews did not get along.

a.      Hatred was both racial and religious

(1)   In 727 BC the Assyrians took the ten northern tribes captive.

(a)   Brought other people into the region

(b)   Remaining Jewish people intermarried

(c)   Lost Racial Purity

(i)     Joshua killing the women and children

(ii)   Strict Jewish homes conduct funerals for children who marry none Jewish spouses

(2)   In time the Southern Kingdom was taking into captivity

(a)   They clung to their Jewish identity

(b)   In the Days of Nehemiah

(i)     They eventually were allowed to return and rebuild the city of Jerusalem

(ii)   The Samaritans tried to stop them

(3)   Religious Tension

(a)   Both claimed a common religious and biological ancestory, but the Samaritans had made some changes.

(b)   Samaritans built a rival temple on Mount Gerazim

(c)   Samaritans “revised” Jewish history to say that certain historic events happened on Mount Gerazim instead of where our OT records they happened today

(d)   Samaritans only accepted the Torah and rejected the other books of the OT.

b.

New Testament Times Customs

(1)    (Show Map) Jews despised Samaritans so intensely they would add three days on their journey between Galilee and Judah

(2)   Jews would not think of sharing utensils with a Samaritan, yet here Jesus was asking her for a cup of water

2.

She asks the question “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.

How can you ask me for a drink?

II.

Four Questions Every Person Asks

A.     The Question Behind the Question: Why would you have anything to do with me?

1.

She was a Samaritan – but I think it went deeper than that.

2.

She was a woman

a.      Jewish men did not speak to women in public – even their own wives and daughters.

b.

The Bruised Pharisees – Walked into walls because they closed their eyes when they saw a woman.

3.

She was a societal outcast

a.

She had had five husbands – Jewish law allowed three

b.

She was currently living with someone – not her husband.

c.

She was at the well when other women probably would not be there.

(1)   She had no reason to believe that Jesus knew this

(2)   She knew it and was never allowed to forget.

4.

She may have been wondering what Jesus really wanted.

a.      Jewish men would speak to prostitutes.

b.

There was no indication the woman was a prostitute but here presence at the well at that time of day would have communicated something about her character to any man in the region

c.

My story of helping a woman who needed gas outside of Pueblo.

5.

Many of us ask the same question or at least have the same feeling

a.

Why would other people want to have anything to do with me, especially if we perceive those people to be “holier than thou” kind of people.

b.

Why would God want to have anything to do with me?

c.

Some people have clearly communicated that they want nothing to do with us.

d.

Some of know our own failures all too well.

e.

Even though we are here, we still allow those things to keep us from fully engaging in life-giving relationships with one another.

6.      Recapping who she is (as a lead to the next question)

a.

A Samaritan

b.

A Woman

c.

An Outcast who is used to being used by people.

d.      Talking with a Jew

e.      Who is also a man