Sermon Tone Analysis

/Scripture: John 4/

* *

*4*  /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.

//a// ) 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.”/

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*/The Disciples Rejoin Jesus /*

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/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  //a// ?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

33 Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?” 34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’?

I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields!

They are ripe for harvest.

36 Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.

37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true.

38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for.

Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

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]

Two weary people converge upon a community well.

One is road weary and ministry weary, the other “life-weary” and worn.

A life mission passionately drove one and the stop was for physical rest and refueling before going on.

The other was wearied by routine, her thirst was showing through and her dissatisfaction was plain, perhaps not to everyone but certainly to this stranger who really should never have spoken to her. 

 

None of his kind would ever have spoken to her.  She’d experienced that rejection before.

Perhaps you have experienced the same thing in your life – rejection for some ridiculous reason.

Perhaps you were not advantaged by your birth and maybe the years have actually made you a little bit oversensitive.

You have been excluded from gatherings, overlooked.

You have overreacted by times and that has only exacerbated the situation.

Just as you have been misjudged by the things that you lack, you have become a judge yourself others who have been blessed.

It is a crime to have been misjudged; it is a shame when we do the same thing, when we allow ourselves to be provoked into behavior that we object to.

God never intended for us to all have the same things.

Some will always be among the poor and others will be rich.

He does not intend that the rich should be judged because they have and He does not intend that the poor should be snubbed because they do not have.

When the “haves” snub the “have-nots” this is pride and arrogance over things that tell us nothing about people.

What a person gathers in this life and what a person gives will say something about their own character and values but it does not make one better than another.

And when the “have-nots” judge the “haves” it is wrong as well.

It is pride inverted, self-pity or even jealousy.

No better than those who judge us.

This was different even than that.

She was not a real Jewess.

Jesus kind would have called her a “half-breed”.

No matter what she did, she could never be free from the “tainted-ness” that had come through forced intermarriage among her predecessors.

It was God’s judgment for a faithless nation and now they were marked and separated.

It had become a reciprocal thing among the Samaritans as well.

They had no more regard for the Jews than the Jews did for them.

Still she was surprised.

Someone who refused to be boxed in by the prejudices of his people.

Someone who was willing to step across the ethnic divide and address her without any detectable awareness that this was anything less than normal behavior.

Even the nature of his conversation – he was asking her for a drink of water.

1.

Is the Message Muddled? /(verses 4-9)/

 

/“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.

//a// )/

 

*It’s funny how great the impact is when someone does the unexpected.*

I guess we all have our stereotypes.

Sometimes inadvertently we create them and too often we reinforce them.

The frightening thing is that we are oblivious to the whole process.

We would never choose to send the message that we do.

On the receiving end it sounds so much different than we intend.

*Communication is a delicate process that requires much thought and sensitivity to others and where they are at a given time.*

Recently I had some wonderful time with a gentleman who works in a very responsible position.

He and his peers are under constant stress and deadlines to be met.

In that environment they just don’t have the time to communicate carefully.

So they just pour it all out, often uncensored, not for the thin-skinned or those easily offended.

One of his struggles has been to shift out of that mode when he is with others in the church who have no experience in the work environment that he has become accustomed to.

I admire his awareness and his receptive attitude to compensate in his style of communication styles.

Not everyone is willing to do this.

It is really the process of seeking to be sensitive to the needs of others ahead of our own agendas and our own pride.

Realizing that people are more important than getting our point across is a major step in building relationships that endure and are transforming in their impact.

*There is tremendous impact when the church enters this realm as well*.

Something happens to our message when we do what people don’t expect us to do.

Pastor Steve Sjogren of the Cincy Vineyard church wrote a book called the “Conspiracy of Kindness”.

He advocates the idea of selflessly serving people in the name of Christ.

There is a difference between serving selflessly and doing so with an agenda.

I had a call from some concern the other night.