Message by Kerrie Bauer, recorded live May 18, 2025 at First Presbyterian Church of Bellingham. Scripture read by Greg Hart.

Living Water Flows

Jesus is our living water and in powerful ways he shows us how it flows between us to bring new life.

• Note that John points out that Jesus was “tired out” from the journey. Imagine yourself in a hot and dry climate, coming upon a lone man sitting beside a well, visibly tired. How does it speak to you to consider Jesus as tired?
• What does it mean to hear Jesus ask for a drink?

• Read John 4:1-42. Notice the questions asked. Who asks questions and who is afraid to ask questions? What do the questions reveal about the asker? What does the silence reveal about those who do not ask questions?

• How does the Samaritan woman experience Jesus’ insight into her life? How does she respond?
• How does living water flow between people in this text?

John 4:1-10

1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” 2 (although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized), 3 he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4 But he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common 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.”

John 4:13-15

13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”