Hearing God’s Voice from His Word
James 4:8 says, “Come near to God and he will come near to you.”
Take a moment and turn your attention to God. Tell God that you desire to trust and obey Him. Ask God to speak to you from His word.
Psalm of the Day
Psalm 70
God, hurry to rescue me. Lord, hurry to help me!
2 Let those who seek to kill me be disgraced and confounded; let those who wish me harm be turned back and humiliated.
3 Let those who say, “Aha, aha!” retreat because of their shame.
4 Let all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; let those who love your salvation continually say, “God is great!”
5 I am oppressed and needy; hurry to me, God. You are my help and my deliverer;
Lord, do not delay.
Read the Entire Psalm
God is personally aware of you. Your need for help does not go unnoticed. Confess your need for help. Seek His help. Rejoice in his salvation and proclaim his greatness.
SCRIPTURE READING:
John 4:1-30 – Christian Standard Bible
Jesus and the Samaritan Woman
4 When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (though Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were), 3 he left Judea and went again to Galilee. 4 He had to travel through Samaria; 5 so he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the property that Jacob had given his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, worn out from his journey, sat down at the well. It was about noon.
7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
“Give me a drink,” Jesus said to her, 8 because his disciples had gone into town to buy food.
9 “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” she asked him. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.
10 Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.”
11 “Sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’? 12 You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.”
13 Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”
15 “Sir,” the woman said to him, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.”
16 “Go call your husband,” he told her, “and come back here.”
17 “I don’t have a husband,” she answered.
“You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus said. 18 “For you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
19 “Sir,” the woman replied, “I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”
21 Jesus told her, “Believe me, woman, an hour 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, because salvation is from the Jews. 23 But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.”
25 The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Jesus told her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.”
The Ripened Harvest
27 Just then his disciples arrived, and they were amazed that he was talking with a woman. Yet no one said, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
28 Then the woman left her water jar, went into town, and told the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” 30 They left the town and made their way to him.
Having God’s Ear through Prayer
- Express thanksgiving to God.
- Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal sin to you.
- Confess your sin to Him and receive forgiveness.
(1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sin He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins.”) - Bring your personal requests to God.
(Psalm 62:8 “Pour out your heart before God”) - Pray for someone in your small group.
- Pray for the River youth as they finish the school year. Pray that God would continue to grow the youth in our church. Pray for youth and children at River who do not know Christ.
Living as God’s People by applying the Bible
Scripture Reflection from the Sermon
Jesus went straight to the heart of things when he revealed the woman’s foolish attempts to quench her own thirst through relationships with men. Her response was to bring up a religious controversy between Jews and Samaritans, a debate that had nothing to do with the actual thirst of her heart or her failed attempts to quench that thirst. She may have just been flooded, and this was an attempt to deflect from her feelings of shame. It may very well have been the woman doing what people often do, focusing on theological minutia when faced with deep personal issues. It would be like telling someone about a deep and important conversation you had, a conversation that very much touched your life and their response was, “What color shirt were you wearing?” Who cares! We can easily miss the point of things because we are often overly focused on temporal, less important things. God may want to get our attention on a very important issue of the heart, and we are focused on some point, that while of interest to us, is not of vital interest to God right now. What has God been trying to tell you about your life, but you have been distracted away from hearing him? Perhaps he is telling you about your attempts to dig broken wells and your response has been to question him about some currently irrelevant issue. Listen to what is important to him. If it is important to him, it should be important to us.