Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Whats up friends!

Welcome back to NXT High School.

My name is Matt Velasco, if we have not met I want you to know that I am so glad that you are here and would love to meet you before you leave tonight!

You’ll hear and see that we say something around these parts, we say that Wednesday night, tonight, is the best night of the week.

And we firmly believe it.

Not just because you get to hangout with friends and have free dinner and a ton of fun, but also because God has a funny way of showing up in special ways on Wednesday nights here at NXT.

So, if you’re new, thanks for being here!

We hope you love it and I want to personally invite you to come back next week.

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Before we get started with the teaching for the evening I want to share some exciting news with you that has already changed my life… I did my first mosh pit two nights ago.

Like, legit mosh pit.

In fact, I cared so much about all of you knowing about this that I took a video of it (not even my wife has seen this).

Check it out...

Video from Underoath concert.

Thats my expectation for our worship from here on out, just want to set the record straight on that.

And yes, I was running around and got my phone knocked out of my hand and a kind stranger held it in the air for me to find.

Nice guy.

Anyways, the real thing I want to start with is a celebration of all that God did this past weekend at the Winter Retreat.

We had about 150 of us up at Lake Geneva for 2 days and let me tell you, God moved powerfully!

In fact, I want to speak very specifically to those of you who are in a place of life where you are being faced with giving something up in order to follow Jesus.

My favorite book of all time is The Hobbit.

My guilty pleasure in life is collecting various versions of The Hobbit.

I have 14 copies.

No joke.

Ever since I was in high school I’ve had this obsession with the story of Bilbo Baggins and the thirteen dwarves who go on an adventure to liberate the lonely mountain from the dragon called Smaug!

But there is a specific scene in the book when Bilbo decides that he’s going to leave everything he knows in order to pursue a new life that he has decided to live.

The opening words of the book are these; “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down or to eat; it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

The moment that we all remember from the book and the movies if you’ve read it or seen it are these iconic words, “I’m going on an adventure!” and that meant Bilbo had to leave the comfort of the Hobbit-hole that he called home.

Tonight we’re going to explore the story of the Samaritan woman at the well who decided she also was going to abandon all comfort in order to pursue the adventure that Jesus had for her.

Big Idea

Text Address

Would you open up your bibles with me and turn to John 4:1-29,

Content

Set Up

At this point in Jesus’ journey the ministry that He had been living was starting to get long, so long in fact that this is one of the times in the Gospels when we see a glimpse into Jesus’ humanity: He was tired, and wanted to sit down by a well and have a drink of water.

While at this well a samaritan women joined Jesus and He made a simple request to her, “could you get me some water?” to which she responded with a question, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?”

You see, Jewish people and Samaritan people hated each other.

It was like Vikings and Packers fans, or Bears and packers fans, or really anyone and packers fans.

It was like democrats and republicans.

There was a stark controversy between the two groups of people… and Jesus was bold enough to ask for a Samaritan to share some water.

But, not only that- He was bold enough to ask a Samaritan woman for water.

In the ancient near east, or what we call today the middle east, there were no dealings between men and women.

The only women men were expected and encouraged to speak to were their wives.

Otherwise it was considered unprofessional and unnecessary for men to interact with women; some would even say inappropriate.

However, Jesus crossed two significant cultural boundaries at this well: He spoke not only to a Samaritan, but to a woman.

She was shocked.

What proceeds is a theological discussion where Jesus slowly reveals to her that He is the Messiah- or the Christ.

He says, “if only you understood who was asking you for water!

If you understood then I would give you the living water!”

Confused, she retorts, “how in the world would you give me so-called living water if you can’t even draw water up for yourself?”

She didn’t understand what Jesus was saying… but he was patient and persistent.

He continued, “Everyone who drinks of this water (the water from the well) will just get thirsty again in an hour!

But if you drink from the water I offer you will never be thirsty again.

It will be like a fountain of life within you!”

She still is taking him literally and missing the spiritual importance of what he is saying.

She responds, “never being thirsty again sounds great to me! Lemme get some of that water!”

Then Jesus does something strange.

He switches gears,

Go into cultural hypothesis that she was known for bedding many men.

Odd time of day (noon)

Didn’t want to be around the other women, perhaps?

What she says next is one of my favorite verses in all of scripture:

Ya think?!

But this is important… because she’s finally starting to understand that Jesus is more than just some dude who came to get a quick drink of water… he might actually be someone more important than that.

So she has some questions and theological concerns:

Now Jesus goes into a defense of who He is.

The women thinks to herself… this sounds a whole like like what my mom and dad told me the Messiah aka the Christ was going to come and do and say.

By now the women stands dumbfounded.

Theres no way her sorry life has led to this moment.

She would never be the one whom the Messiah would speak to.

She would never be the one whom the Messiah would reveal Himself to.

Maybe you resonate with this… “This whole God thing sounds cool and all… but there’s no way He would ever accept me.

No way He would ever want me, or talk to me.

If only you knew what I’ve done....”

And then Jesus says these words,

At that moment it seems that faith welled up from within her because right then and there they’re interrupted by Jesus’ friends, the Disciples.

And instead of asking more questions or ignoring everything that just happened because it seems too good to be true OR too crazy to be true she leaves her water jar and goes back to town… “come, see a man who told me all that I ever did.

Can this be the Christ?”

Remember, who did she say they believed the Messiah would be?

and, “Come see the man who told me all that I ever did” ....

He will tell us all things.

All she knew was that the Messiah was supposedly going to know all things… and somehow He knew about my past.

I don’t know all of the details, but I think this might be the Messiah?!”

So she drops her jar and runs back to her village and tells everyone she can find about this man who told her everything she ever did.

In between the lines here there seems to be something we can read into… all we see is the one detail Jesus knew: That she has had multiple husbands.

But that doesn’t constitute “all that she ever did” so we can assume that their conversation extended to more than just her love life.

He must have spoken to her of her fears, her needs, her anxiety, the reason why she went to the well so late in the heat of the sun, the family member she lost when she was little, the person who bullied her down the village road, the trauma she may have experienced in her past, the shame she felt about that one thing that she had told no one about, somehow He was able to tell her all that she had ever done… and so she had to tell everyone about Him.

She dropped her jar.

And so should you.

Drop your jar

I have only one point for you tonight friends.

Drop.

Your.

Jar.

For this women her jar was her distraction from her shame.

She used it to escape the village every day around noon.

She used it to run away.

It was her escape.