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Feb 16, 2020

Encounters: The Woman at the Well (Click here for Resources)

Passage: John 4:1-30

Speaker: Craig & Courtney Co Sermon

Series: Encounters with Jesus

Category: Grace Brevard

Keywords: truth, worship, good news, spirit, outcast, messiah, hunger, thirst

As we begin a new series, we start with a familiar story in the gospel of John, with the woman at the well and her Encounter with Jesus. In this meeting, we’ll look to see (in ourselves as well) this woman’s eternal thirst, the desire to be known, and a longing for true worship. As Jesus speaks truth and healing into her life, she is compelled to immediately share this good news with others that they too might come and have their thirst quenched in the one true Messiah.

Order of Worship

CALL TO WORSHIP: Psalm 63:1-3 

READING: John 6:32-35

MUSIC:    

GRATITUDE  / CONFESSION  / PRAYER:

  • CONFESSION: WSB – Section 2. 31

    ALL: Eternal and merciful God, You have loved us with a love beyond our understanding and have set us on paths of righteousness for Your name’s sake. Yet, we have strayed from Your way, having sinned against You in thought, word, and deed. As we remember the lavish gift of Your grace, we praise You and give thank that we’re forgiven in the finished work of Jesus. Grant us now, the gift to die daily to sin and self-righteousness and to rise daily to our new lives in Christ. In whose name we pray. Amen.   

GIVING  / MISSIONAL LIVING: 

CENTRAL TEXT: John 4:1-26  

MESSAGE: Encounters with Jesus: The Woman at the Well 

COMMUNION: 

READING BEFORE CLOSING SONG: Revelation 5:11-13   

BENEDICTION: Revelation 7:16-17 & 21:6b

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES:

  • Psalm 1:1-3
  • Isaiah 55:1-3
  • Isaiah 58:3
  • Isaiah 61:1-2a
  • Matthew 11:28-30
  • John 6:63-65
  • John 7:38-39
  • John 10:9-10
  • John 14:25-26
  • John 19:28-30
  • 2 Corinthians 3:14-17
  • Hebrews 12:28
  • Revelation 5:11-13   
  • Psalm 42:1-2
  • John 19:28-30

MEDIA:

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Throughout this series we will see Encounters with Jesus that lead to various reactions (gratitude, dismissal, etc) depending on the person and where they are spiritually. When is the last time you had an encounter with Him (through His Spirit, through His Word, etc.) and what was your reaction?
  2. List some of the ways this woman at the well would have been considered an outcast and note the significance of Jesus talking to her and asking for water.
  3. Jesus offers her Living Water where she will never thirst again. What does He mean by Living Water? What does it represent for us today? 
  4. List some of the ways we all thirst and yet are never satisfied. Describe what it might look like to continually thirst for God. 
  5. When Jesus states that she has had 5 husbands (and now living with a man), she owns what he has said and changes the discussion to worship.
    1. Why did she do that?
    2. What answer is she looking for?
  6. What is Jesus conveying when he says "neither here or Jerusalem?
  7. What is Jesus touching on when he says "you worship what you do not know we worship what we know?
  8. What does Jesus mean by worshipping in Spirit and Truth and how is this also tied to the Father seeking those who do so?
  9. What does Jesus mean by the time is “right now?”
  10. List some of the ways (people, things, status, etc.) that everyone worships and contrast that with worshipping in Spirit and Truth?
  11. Why did this woman respond to Jesus statements about worship with jumping to the coming Messiah (why jump to that topic)?
  12. What compelled her to drop her jar and immediately go to town to bring others to “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did?
    1. Why did so many come so quickly?
  13. We all go through life each week driven by some type of “good news” and the desire to share it with others. List some examples. 
  14. How might a “good” encounter with Jesus lead us to continually share this good news with others?
    1. How might the Living Water and the Truth compel us with new power and motivation?  

QUOTES:

  • “The insatiable thirst for everything that lies beyond, and that life reveals, is the most living proof of our immortality.” - Charles Baudelaire
  • “In our nagging state of thirst for paradise lost, what do we drink? Saltwater. We consume things that look and feel and sound like they can quench our thirst. They promise unmatched pleasure. They promote limitless comfort, joy, strength, peace, and excitement. They vow to remove our fears, tears, worries, guilt, and shame. They pledge to fill the voids in our hearts and soothe our aching souls. They promise paradise. But they can’t deliver. We drink them, but our thirst remains unquenched. In fact, we are left thirstier. And we experience devastating hangovers — negative spiritual, emotional, physical, and relational consequences — as a result.” - Steve Hoppe “Sipping Saltwater 
  • “It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most human beings live only for the gratification of it.” - Aristotle 
  • The soul’s deepest thirst is for God Himself, who has made us so that we can never be satisfied without Him. - F. F. Bruce
  • “There is in true grace an infinite circle; a man by thirsting receives, and receiving thirsts for more.” - Thomas Shephard 
  • No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.” - Eugene Ionesco
  • “Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of everything else.” - Charles Spurgeon
  • “It is because Jesus Christ experienced cosmic thirst on the cross that you and I can have our spiritual thirst satisfied. It is because he died that we can be born again. And he did it gladly. Seeing what he did and why he did it will turn our hearts away from the things that enslave us and toward him in worship.” - Tim Keller
  • “This whole ‘happiness from the inside’ thing…where's it coming from? What am I feeling good about? You have to have some sense of accomplishment...Because I knew that you need two things. You need money and you need a girlfriend. With no money, there's no girlfriend. Of course, I hated myself deeply, but that's because I didn't have the money and the girlfriend. If I had the money and the girlfriend, I knew I would hate myself a little less.” - Larry David (GQ, February 2020)
  • “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” - C.S. Lewis
  • “Everyone worships something. The only choice you get is what to worship.” - Tim Keller
  • “I have been a scoundrel all my life, I’ve been selfish. I’ve been cruel at times, hard to work with, and I’m grateful that so many of you in this room have given me a second chance….I think that’s when we’re at our best: when we support each other. Not when we cancel each other out for our past mistakes, but when we help each other to grow. When we educate each other; when we guide each other to redemption.” - Joaquin Phoenix (Oscars Acceptance Speech 2020)
  • “The only way to break the hold of a beautiful object on the soul is to show it an object even more beautiful.” - Thomas Chalmers
  • “When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.” - G.K Chesterton
  • “I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven.” - A.W. Tozer

BOOKS / DOCS

SERMONS / TALKS: