Study Guide
He Had to Meet You
Newbreak’s Sermon Study Guide is an in-house resource that serves sermon-based Life Groups and/or individuals who want to reflect further on how the message contributes to their spiritual formation.
Year after year one of the most searched-for questions on Google is “Who is Jesus?” Whether we know it or not all of our deepest longings point us to the person who lived 2,000 years ago in Israel. The Gospel of John invites us to “come and see” who this Jesus is and how he is the one in whom we find life.
About this week's sermon:
We schedule many appointments in our monthly calendar. There are car maintenance appointments, hair appointments, doctor appointments, the list goes on! But some appointments belong to a different category altogether... divine appointments. These are the ones where God schedules for us. Listen in as we see Jesus scheduling a divine appointment with an unexpected guest!
Icebreakers for Life Groups
- If you could only bring 3 things to a deserted island, what would you bring? Why?
- What is one spiritual habit that you have practiced that has made the biggest impact on your relationship with God?
Let’s read John 4:1-12
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[d] 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.”
Point 1 – Jesus is on a mission to meet us.
In Jesus’ time water that moved, springs of water as opposed to cisterns or wells, were far superior sources of water. They did not need to be dug out: work on man’s part was not required. They did not get stale, or filled with bacteria and growth. They did not run dry like a cistern and needed to be constantly refilled. They were referred to as living water, a good gift from a good God, that provided fresh water at all times, filled with minerals that came up from the earth and satisfied the body. This is what Jesus was saying of Himself when he met the woman at the well.
Noon is not when one normally goes to draw water (vs.6). It was too hot. This woman came to the well at this time to avoid all of the other people who would be at the well at dusk. She was tired and ashamed and didn't want to feel the judgment of those around her. Have you ever felt like that before?
She was also a woman from Samaria. The Jews disliked the Samaritans so much that they would create a plan to go around it rather than go through it. Jesus positioned Himself to be directly in her path when she needed Him most. She was not an inconvenience to Him. Jesus was offering Himself to this woman who had been used by several other people and had nothing left to offer anyone.
Jesus is letting the woman know that He is willing to come to her. He wants to meet her where she is. He is going to do the work she needs to have the “living water” that she needs to refresh her soul and make her alive. She is not required to work, and strive for this water. This water will not run dry. And unlike the water that the well provided, it would bring healing to her weary and broken body and spirit.
Questions for Group Discussion or Personal Reflection
- Where is your Samaria? What places or people do you regularly avoid that God may be calling you to reach and interact with for Christ?
- In light of the fact that shame is a lie the enemy uses to keep us from Christ, how do you feel about going to Christ and accepting the Living Water He offers when you have done something you regret or are not proud of?
- Have you ever felt like an inconvenience to God? What do you think makes you feel that way?
Continue reading John 4:13-18
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.”
Point 2 - Nothing other than Jesus will ultimately satisfy.
The woman wanted Jesus to provide water that would keep her from ever being thirsty again so that she would not have to do the physical work of returning to the well every day (vs.15). How often we try to create shortcuts in our lives hoping that this next thing will satisfy us. We try to make things streamlined so that we have time to do the things we want, only to find that those things don’t fulfill us for any lasting amount of time.
This woman appears to have tried to find fulfillment in her relationships. It got to the point where she had so many husbands that she didn’t even marry the man she was living with in the passage (vs.17-18). She was not aware that the only person who would ever be able to ultimately satisfy her needs was Jesus.
A personal relationship with the One who can provide the living water each and every day is the only thing that we can rely on to bring fulfillment. Jesus refreshes us each and every day. He becomes what we need as those needs change. A relationship with Him will never be stale or boring, and He will do the work in us to bring about the results He desires from us.
Questions for Group Discussion or Personal Reflection
- What am I trying to fill that only Jesus can fill? (my anxiety; spiritual disciplines)?
- Who is Jesus asking you to bring to the well to meet Him? How can you share with them the One who will satisfy them?
- What is your favorite way that Jesus has offered you rest this week? Did you take Him up on it? How can you find more rest in Him?
Continue reading John 4:19-29
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.”
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?”
Point 3 - Jesus frees us
The woman at the well was touched by her interaction with Jesus. She was a woman bound by her past hurts/struggles and found hope for a better life in Christ. While she may have battled with shame and fear because of the life she lived, she found love and acceptance in Christ.
This interaction with Jesus changed her. She came to the well for one purpose (to fill up her jar) and left with an entirely different purpose for her life. We see the immediate response of the woman in vs.28-29.
“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?”
She went back to her town and told as many people as she could about Jesus Christ, the Messiah that the Samaritans were waiting for. Her value was restored. Her purpose was clear. She was now freed to tell others about what God had done in her life.
Questions for Group Discussion or Personal Reflection
- Who was the first person you told when you became a follower of Jesus? Who is the last person that you told about what God has done in your life?
- In what ways has God changed your life since you first met Jesus?
- What do you think are the major differences between the response of the woman at the well (John 4) and Nicodemus (the Pharisee fund in John 3)?