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May 10, 2020

A Good Doctor Encourages Fluid Intake

A Good Doctor Encourages Fluid Intake

Passage: John 4:1-30

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: House Calls

It’s His perhaps most awkward encounter, complete with apparent social gaffes, misunderstandings, and comments that might make any onlooker turn away. But the mark of His goodness is His ability to turn an awkward moment into one of healing.

5.10.20 GMR Online Service from Graceworks Media on Vimeo.

Order of Worship

CALL TO WORSHIP: Psalm 42:1-5
OLD TESTAMENT READING: Jeremiah 2:1--13; Isaiah 49:8-10
CENTRAL TEXT: John 4:1-30
MESSAGE TITLE: A good doctor encourages fluid intake
BENEDICTION: Numbers 6:24-26 

Children's Lesson

Mother's Day Coloring Sheet

Readings & Scripture

CALL TO WORSHIP: Psalm 42:1-5

LEADER As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
PEOPLE: 3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival.

LEADER: Psa. 42:5 Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?

ALL: Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation
6 and my God.

OLD TESTAMENT READING: Jeremiah 2:1-13; Isaiah 49:8-10

11 Has a nation changed its gods,
even though they are no gods?
But my people have changed their glory
for that which does not profit.
12 Be appalled, O heavens, at this;
be shocked, be utterly desolate,
declares the LORD,
13 for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Is. 49:8 Thus says the LORD:
“In a time of favor I have answered you;
in a day of salvation I have helped you;
I will keep you and give you
as a covenant to the people,
to establish the land,
to apportion the desolate heritages,
9 saying to the prisoners, ‘Come out,’
to those who are in darkness, ‘Appear.’
They shall feed along the ways;
on all bare heights shall be their pasture;
10 they shall not hunger or thirst,
neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them,
for he who has pity on them will lead them,
and by springs of water will guide them.

CENTRAL TEXT: John 4:1-30

John 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.

John 4:7 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.”

John 4:16 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.”

John 4:27 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.

Numbers 6:24-26
The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

ADDITIONAL Related SCRIPTURES:

  • Genesis 16:1-7
  • Jeremiah 2:11-13
  • Luke 11:10-13
  • Acts 2:38
  • John 7:37-39
  • John 8:31-38
  • John 19:34
  • 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1
  • 1 John 2:15-17

Related Media

5.10.20 Album

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

 

  1. If you were scared to go to a doctor when you were younger, when did that stop? Was there anything the doctor did to set you at ease? Can you name a time you were so thankful for a doctor’s care?
  2. How would you characterize this encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman--awkward, subtly sarcastic, something else? Why? What all creates the apparent tension in the air--in the words they exchange or the history that stands behind both their ancestries?
  3. To put it a certain way, what all is Jesus out to “heal” in her? What’s the remedy?
  4. How would you describe the change(s) in her--even what happens beyond our sermon passage into v. 42? What might account for the change?
  5. Metaphorically but practically speaking, what do you find yourself constantly going back to the well for, only to find what you draw out leaves your thirst unslaked?
  6. What has Jesus come to provide which nothing else can? How is that meant to change the way we think of all other goods in this world?

QUOTES

  • He loves Thee too little, who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake. Augustine
  • But what do I love when I love my God? Not the sweet melody of harmony and song; not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes, and spices; not manna or honey; not limbs such as the body delights to embrace. It is not these that I love when I love my God. And yet, when I love Him, it is true that I love a light of a certain kind, a voice, a perfume, a food, an embrace; but they are of the kind that I love in my inner self, when my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space; when it listens to sound that never dies away; when it breathes fragrance that is not borne away on the wind; when it tastes food that is never consumed by the eating; when it clings to an embrace from which it is not severed by fulfillment of desire. This is what I love when I love my God. Augustine
  • . . .in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship. . . is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings. - David Foster Wallace

 

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