Sermon Outline:
1. A Divine Knowledge
2. A Divine Journey
3. A Divine Rest
4. A Divine Appointment
5. A Divine Salvation
6. A Divine Cleansing
Sermon Text:
John 4:1-15
4:1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 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.
7 A woman from 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 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.) 10 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.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
Sermon Notes
Comparing John 3 and John 4
As we study John 3 and 4 together, we discover a series of striking contrasts. Let us look at them.
First, in John 3 we have “a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus:” in John 4 it is an unnamed woman that is before us.
Second, the former was a man of rank, a “Master of Israel:” the latter was a woman of the lower ranks, for she came “to draw water.”
Third, the one was a favored Jew: the other was a despised Samaritan.
Fourth, Nicodemus was a man of high reputation, a member of the Sanhedrin: the one with whom Christ dealt in John 4 was a woman of dissolute habits.
Fifth, Nicodemus sought out Christ: here Christ seeks out the woman.
Sixth, Nicodemus came to Christ “by night:” Christ speaks to the woman at mid-day.
Seventh, to the self-righteous Pharisee Christ said, “Ye must be born again:” to this sinner of the Gentiles He tells of “the gift of God.”
Election is of persons—predestination is of things. All the great movements of the universe are regulated by God’s will, —But if the great movements, then the small movements for the great depend upon the small. It was predestinated that our Savior should go through Samaria, because there was a chosen sinner there. And she was a chosen sinner, for if not she never would have chosen God, or known Jesus Christ. The whole machinery of grace was therefore set in motion in the direction of one poor lost sinner, that she might be restored to her Savior and to her God. That is what we wish to see in our own experience—to look back and date our eternal life from the covenant.
Father ‘twas Thy love that knew us, earth’s foundation long before
That same love to Jesus drew us, by its sweet constraining power,
And will keep us, safely now and ever more.
(Dr. G. S. Bishop).
