Pastor Tom has been leading us through Worship in the book of the Revelation of Jesus. Today we’re going to take look at worship from a different angle. We’re going to do that by looking at the story of a gentile being brought to faith in Jesus.
John 4:1-30
(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.”
(16) Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
(17) The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’;
(18) for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
(19) The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
(20) Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
(21) Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
(22) You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
(23) But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.
(24) God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
(25) The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.”
(26) Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
(27) Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?”
(28) So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people,
(29) “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”
(30) They went out of the town and were coming to him.
I’m pretty sure most of you have read this story before and have a version of it playing in your head. I know when I first heard this story in my childhood there were flannel board figures involved playing out the scene. There is, however, so much more to the story and I would like to take the opportunity to unpack it and then make some applications.