March 19, 2017

Sermon Message by Rev. Dr. Parrish L. Bridges

"Thirsting for Grace"

Bible Texts: NIV

Old Testament: Genesis 17:1-7

Water From the Rock

1) The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2) So they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.”

Moses replied, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?”

3) But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?”

4) Then Moses cried out to the Lord, “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.”

5) The Lord answered Moses, “Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6) I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7) And he called the place Massahand Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Old Testament: Psalm 95

1) Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;

let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.

2) Let us come before him with thanksgiving

and extol him with music and song.

3) For the Lord is the great God,

the great King above all gods.

4) In his hand are the depths of the earth,

and the mountain peaks belong to him.

5) The sea is his, for he made it,

and his hands formed the dry land.

6) Come, let us bow down in worship,

let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;

7) for he is our God

and we are the people of his pasture,

the flock under his care.

Today, if only you would hear his voice,

8) “Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,

as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness,

9) where your ancestors tested me;

they tried me, though they had seen what I did.

10) For forty years I was angry with that generation;

I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray,

and they have not known my ways.’

11) So I declared on oath in my anger,

‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”

New Testament: John 4: 5-15

4) Now he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’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? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

13) Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but 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.”