Sermon Tone Analysis

Last week, we began our Soul Activity series talking about what it means to love the Lord our God with everything we are.

Last week, we began our Soul Activity series talking about what it means to love the Lord our God with everything we are.

And this is the critical first step if we are to be able to carry out His purpose for us in the city of Bristol, which is to reach the people of Bristol with the love and life of Christ.

If you weren’t with us last week, you can listen to the audio of last week’s message on the Bristol page of ValleyCommunity.cc.

This week, we are going to take the next step in our Soul Activity, as we learn that in God wanting us to love Him with our everything, there are four main categories that make up our everything; Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength.

And over the next four weeks, we are going to break down each category, starting today with loving the Lord our God with all our heart.

We are going to read a lengthy passage today, but its important that we see the whole story in its entire context.

And particularly, the areas of satisfaction that are uncovered in the narrative.

You can begin to turn to and as you do, I will set up our discussion for today.

I can’t get no satisfaction... (lyrics)

When you think about loving the Lord with all your heart, what do you think about?

The Bible tells us in describing the heart in various passages that the Heart is where we find our passions, our will, and our volition.

The Bible also tells us that it is out of the heart that our desire to sin finds its root as well.

And on the throne of our hearts, just like the place of primacy over our whole lives like we talked about last week, on the throne of our hearts we are often tempted to place idols.

John Calvin, the late theologian said that, “Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.”

Meaning that if we don’t keep God on the throne of our hearts, we will replace Him with some physical or emotional aspect of creation.

Underneath it all, however, is the quest to be satisfied.

Don’t you want to just be satisfied?

Like a thirst on a hot day, or a meal after a long day, we want to be satisfied.

And to love God with all our heart ultimately means that we find all our satisfaction in Jesus.

Our motivations reveal what or who we are turning to to find satisfaction.

Our will shows us how determined we are to achieve satisfaction in that way.

All of this comes from our hearts, and that is why it is essential in loving God with our everything, to love God with all our heart.

To seek our satisfaction, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, in Christ.

Let’s pray.

To set up the scene, there are, first, a few conflicts that are at play here.

First, this is a meeting between a Jew and a Samaritan, and at the time Jews and Samaritans hated each other.

The Jews believed Samaritans to be inferior to them because Samaritans were a product of procreation between Israelites and Gentiles during the time when Assyria conquered Israel around 722 BC.

Many Israelites abandoned Israel, but those that remained intermarried with incoming foreigners, and the line of Samaritans was born.

Second, this is a midday meeting between a man and a woman, and again, in this culture, a woman would not be able to meet with a man without her husband.

This meeting, in terms of culture, is nothing short of scandalous, yet this is the time, culture, and moment that God chose to have this exchange.

Now, there is so much to breakdown in the discussion between Jesus and the woman at the well.

There is so much to learn, so much to take away, and we are only examining one aspect of it today, that of satisfaction.

The narrative in John says that it was about the sixth hour, or noon, and it would have been an unusual time for women to come to a village looking for water.

It likely that the Samaritan women wanted to avoid other women in her community, presumably to keep from being publicly shunned, given her general character.

So, the woman is surprised to see Jesus at the well (she thought she would be alone), and even more surprised that this Rabbi would ask her for a drink of water.

No Jew would willingly drink from a Samaritan’s cup, that’s how much the two ethnicities hated each other.

The woman responds kind of sarcastically, “you Jews only talk to us Samaritans when you are desperate and you want something.”

(v.9)

But Jesus responded to her not so He could win an argument, but so that He might win her.

He said that if she knew who she was speaking with, she would ask him for water, and He would give her an everlasting water and she would never thirst again.

But still, the woman responds according to her physical thirst and desire for her thirst to be satisfied in the immediate.

“How do you expect to give me water when you don’t even have anything to carry water in?

How will you get it out of the well in the first place?”

Here is Jesus’ response again from the passage:

John 4:

Now, to win this woman, Jesus needed to win her heart.

Not romantically, of course, but spiritually.

So Jesus’s reply to her was to help her lift her attention from her physical needs to her spiritual reality.

The material water would satisfy her thirst only temporarily; the spiritual water would quench her inner thirst forever.

The well water had to be drawn up by hard labor; the spiritual water would bubble up from within.

Then Jesus went from the outward physical need, to the inward spiritual deficiency when He called her on her many relationships.

The woman then sees that Jesus is at least a prophet, but tries to distract Him with a worship argument that Jesus quickly shuts down (v.

21-23).

Jesus immediately told the woman that true worship is that of the spirit, which means that the worshiper must deal with God openly and honestly.

How does that connect to the heart?

Well, the woman had been dodging Jesus’ questions, suspicious of Him, and unwilling to open her heart to God up to this point.

Jesus went from her need to be satisfied physically, to her need to be satisfied relationally.

This put the woman in corner, so to speak, where she had to admit her need.

And finally, she did.

John 4:

She had this one, small hope, that someday a Messiah called Christ would come and explain to her the mysteries of life.

The Bible doesn’t tell us what mysteries she wants answered specifically, but I think that, at least in part, she wanted to know why her need to quench her thirst could never be achieved, and why her need for relationship had not yet been satisfied.

In other words, she wanted to know if she mattered at all.

Think of her life.

A Samaritan, hated.

An adulterer, shunned.

Multiple marriages, an embarrassment.

No children that we know of, a failure.

And here is a rabbi, breaking the rules, talking to her in public, without her husband present, and who was offering her everlasting life.

And in so doing, was offering a way for her heart to be satisfied.

And then, right here, to this woman who didn’t matter, Jesus told her what matters the most.

Jesus, in the first person, claims that He is the Messiah in verse 26.

She said, “Christ will come and explain things to me,” and He said, “I who speak to you am He.”

Let’s bring this into today’s context.

How many of you in this room, have at one time or another, felt like the woman at the well?

The truth is, all of us have felt like that, at some point.

Because all of us are trying to satisfy what we believe to be the needs of our hearts.

And, essentially, there are three categories of the needs of our hearts:

Physical, Relational, Spiritual

Physical - Health/Well being

Relational - Emotional/Interpersonal

Spiritual - Foundational/Essential

The problem is, that like the woman at the well did at first, we think our hearts can be satisfied by earthly things, and/or aspects of creation.

And while temporarily this might seem true, such temporary, earthly means do not leave us satisfied, do they?

This is one of the reasons why, for those who struggle with addiction, it takes more and more and more and more, because one dose just not cutting it.

The is one of the reasons why we jump from relationship to relationship, because the satisfaction we thought we would get from relationship A didn’t happen, so that must their fault, and I’ll go on to relationship B. But that will break down too eventually, and the cycle will continue without end.

And underneath the physical and the relational needs is our spiritual need.

But we think that our physical and relational feed our spiritual, but its actually reversed.

Our spiritual needs supply and fill and physical and relational needs because when we understand that we have a deep need that only Jesus can fill, we will realize that as we allow Jesus to fill our spiritual need, our other needs can become satisfied because we are no longer relying on a thing or a person to satisfy us, we now rely on Jesus as our satisfaction.

How many of us in this room have sought to be spiritually satisfied through an earthly relationship like the woman at the well?

And how many of us, in that pursuit, have come up empty?

Or how many of us have sought spiritual satisfaction through a physical indulgence?

And how many of us, in that pursuit, ended up in a cycle of addiction and/or dependence, as opposed to the freedom and life that we thought we would enjoy?

Billy Graham - Barry Gibb story

The world tells us to follow our hearts because the world thinks that our hopes and dreams spring from there.

But the Bible says the opposite.

Jeremiah says that the heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things, who can know it?

And our hopes and dreams come from God, and His design and purpose for our lives in His great plan.

If I follow my heart, I will follow it to my own destruction.

Instead, I need to put my heart in Jesus’ Hands and follow Jesus.