WHAT ARE YOU THIRSTY FOR? A LESSON ON WORSHIP

Sermon: PastorBryan

Have you ever been in a boring worship service? You may have been in a boring church service but a true worship service is exciting, fulfilling and meaningful. Learning to worship God in Spirit and in truth will change your relationship with God from stale and boring to exciting and exhilarating.

This sermon examines the following scripture and what Jesus meant by true worship in spirit and in truth.

Scripture: John 4:7-24

A Samaritan Woman Meets Her Messiah

⁷ A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” ⁸ For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

⁹ Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

¹⁰ Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

¹¹ The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water? ¹² Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?”

¹³ Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”

¹⁵ The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”

¹⁷ The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.”

Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ ¹⁸ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”

¹⁹ The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. ²⁰ Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.”

²¹ Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father.²² You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. ²³ But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. ²⁴ God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Introduction to John 4: 7-24, Jesus and the Samaritan woman. 

Text Background

• The Jews and the Samaritans didn’t get along to put it mildly. Typically if the Jews were traveling and the shortest route to their destination was through Samaria, they would take the longer route to avoid interaction with the Samaritans.
• The Samaritans were actually Jews who had intermarried with Assyrians.
• The Bible doesn’t tell us the woman’s name, only that Jesus meets her at the well and she was a Samaritan.
• We also know she lived in Sychar, about 1.5 miles from Jacob’s well (30 miles north of Jerusalem).
• Jesus is on the move. John the Baptist had been put in jail and Jesus knew the Pharisees had heard that He had baptized more people than John. Things were heating up for Jesus so he left Judea heading for Galilee.
• This passage tells us that, “He needed to go through Samaria” (verse 4). This gives us the indication that Jesus had a pre-scheduled meeting with the woman at the well.