Sermon: Do You Know the Gift of God:  Drink From the Living Water

Part Two: John 4: 6-10

Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.  A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 

The Samaritan Woman: How can you ask me …?

Jesus asked the Samaritan woman at the well for water to drink.  She was startled that a Jew would ask her, a Samaritan, for anything!

She knew the Jews hated her people.  They felt that Jews who had married Assyrians betrayed both their people and nation.  Add to this that this Samaritan woman knew how her own people felt about her.

When Jesus asked her for water, she asks, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?”  Jews did not deal with Samaritans.

Jesus’ Response: If you knew the gift of God …

When Jesus refers to the living water of God, He is saying to us to drink of the everlasting God.  He is not referring to a physical thirst as she thought, but of a living desire to be closer to God.

When we read His Word, The Bible, we are reading His Living Water. And when we study The Bible, our spirit – the Holy Spirit in us – is being fed.

A Talk with God is a conversation like no other.

No respectable person would have said a word to this woman.  But Jesus is having a conversation with her!

In John 4: 16, Jesus asks her to get her husband.  She answers truthfully that she has no husband.  Jesus responds, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.”

When she discovered that Jesus knew her private life, she quickly changed the subject.  Will you try to change the subject?

The woman reveals that she knows the Messiah is coming.  Jesus then reveals himself to her, and she returns to the city to tell others.  Despite her reputation, many took her invitation and went to meet Jesus.

Jesus used her to introduce the people of this city to God.  If you think about it, she is the first female evangelist.

Don’t think that God cannot use you because He can use us all.

Read the Full Chapter of the Scripture Referenced:
John Chapter 4

Read the other parts of the sermon, Do You Know the Gift of God?
Do You Know the Gift of God? (Part One)
Believe the Word that Jesus Speaks to You (Part Three)
Confidently Trust the Lord, Your Savior (Part Four)