If You Knew The Gift Of God

IF YOU KNEW THE GIFT OF GOD!

JOHN 4:10

INTRODUCTION

A. HUMOR

1. Did you hear about the man who had emergency surgery on his hand and lost 3 fingers? The man asked the man if he could still write.

2. The doctor answered, “Maybe, but don’t count on it.”

B. TEXT

5 So he came to a town in Samaria... 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. 7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” 11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” 16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” 17 “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” 19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.... 25 I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” 26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am He.” JOHN 4:5-11, 13-19, 25-26.

C. THESIS

1. Tonight we’re looking at a woman who encountered Jesus unexpectedly. At first she thought He was just another Jew, but before long she found herself face to face with God.

2. The title of this message is, “If You Knew the Gift of God!”

I. A LADY’S VISIT TO THE FOUNTAIN

A. THE WOMAN WAS THIRSTY

1. We find this woman making her way to Jacob’s well to get some water. No doubt she was thirsty. But she wasn’t just physically thirsty, she was spiritually thirsty! How do we know?

2. The Lord Jesus revealed in John 4:18, “The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

3. This woman had gone through five husbands and was currently with another man. Evidently she was searching for something but wasn’t finding it. Yet she kept trying. What she was searching for was not a man, but a relationship -- with God.

4. Many people do this; they keep searching for something but they don’t know what it is. The unmet need is to connect to the Life of God on the inside.

B. SHE CAME TO JACOB’S WELL

1. She must have run out of water at her house and her thirst drove her to go to the well of her fathers, the place where her family had always gone to slake their thirst.

2. When this woman went to Jacob’s well to releave her thirst, she was going to the wrong place; a place that could never satisfy her on the inside.

3. Aptly enough, this well is named after her forefather “Jacob”, which was his name before his encounter with God at the Jabbok. The name “Jacob” means “deceiver.” This woman is a picture of the thirsty world seeking satisfaction in all the wrong places, finding only false advertising of satisfaction.

C. JESUS WAS THERE

1. This time was different, Jesus was there! Beside the deceptive well sat the well established by God since the foundation of the world.

2. Jesus pointed out to her that she had come to draw water from the Well of Sychar, which was not “living water”, but surface water, runoff, stagnant, flat, dead.

3. He offered her living water, Because He is “the fountain of living waters” (according to Jer. 17:13).

4. Jesus then made an eternal declaration; "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water." (John 4:10, NKJV)