John 4:7-14 - Homiletics

The conversation with the Samaritan woman.

I. THE FIRST APPROACH IS MADE ON OUR LORD 'S SIDE . "Give me to drink."

1 . Consider the person addressed. "There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water."

2 . Consider how he seeks to elicit her thought and to gain her soul. He asks a favour. "Give me to drink." This was to recognize her momentary superiority.

II. THE QUICK RECOLLECTION ON HER SIDE OF THE WALL OF SEPARATION BETWEEN JEW AND SAMARITAN . "How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria?"

1 . She identified Jesus as a Jew by his dress or his accent or by both.

2 . Consider the embittering alienations wrought by religious differences.

"For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans." Yet the Galilaeans, like our Lord and his disciples, may have been less influenced by the policy of isolation than the people of Judaea, for while Jesus asked a drink from a Samaritan, his disciples went to a Samaritan city to buy meat.

3 . Mark the perpetuity of religious hatred. It dated from the age of the Captivity. It still exists to separate Samaritans both from Jews and from Christians.

III. OUR LORD 'S OFFER OF THE BEST GIFT TO THE SAMARITAN WOMAN . "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water."

1 . The gift of God is the living water, as he who speaks to her is the Agent of imparting it to the soul of man.

2 . Mark how it is to be obtained. "Thou wouldest have asked of him." It is by prayer—the prayer of faith. Some say that we are not to pray for salvation, but simply to believe in order to salvation.

3 . Mark the cause of the sinner not receiving the gift of God. "If thou knewest the gift of God." Ignorance of the worth of Christ is the great cause of the gift not being appropriated. The Samaritan woman has so little idea of the import of our Lord's words that she thinks only of the water of Jacob's well, and therefore our Lord has to set the truth in a new and striking light before her.

IV. THE TRUE NATURE OF THE LIVING WATER THAT IS IN CHRIST 'S DISPOSAL .

1 . It satisfies more than mere momentary wants. The water of Jacob's well would satisfy a thirst that would recur again. This living water would fully satisfy the thirst of the immortal spirit, and finally end the inward unrest. "Whosoever shall drink of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst." Earthly satisfactions leave an emptiness in the soul which needs an ever fresh supply from external sources.

2 . The living water is