This Is Disciple Making
At Its Best!
Discipleship Group Questions for
February 27, 2005
Scripture:
Ex. 17:3-7 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?
Ex. 17:4 Then Moses cried out to the LORD, What am I to do with these people?
They are almost ready to stone me.
Ex. 17:5 The LORD answered Moses, Walk on ahead 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 Massah and Meribah because the
Israelites quarreled and because they tested the LORD saying, Is the LORD among us or not?
Psa. 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 you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts as
you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert,
9 where your fathers tested and 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.
Rom. 5:1 8
Therefore, since
we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we
have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we
rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
3 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we
know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and
character, hope. 5 And hope does
not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the
Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. 6 You see, at just the right time,
when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a
righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love
for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
John 4:5-42
So he came to a town in Samaria
called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had
given to his son Joseph. 6
Jacobs well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down
by the well. It was about the sixth hour. 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?
12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well
and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds? 13
Jesus answered, Everyone
who drinks this water will be thirsty again,
14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.
Indeed, the water I 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
wont 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. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this
mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem. 21
Jesus declared, Believe
me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this
mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do
not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now
come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for
they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers
must worship in spirit and in truth. 25 The woman said, I know that
Messiah (called Christ) is coming. When he comes, he will explain
everything to us. 26 Then Jesus declared, I who speak to you am he. 27
Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a
woman. But no one asked,
What do you want? or Why are you talking with her? 28
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the
people, 29 Come, see a man who told me everything I
ever did. Could this be the Christ? 30
They came out of the town and made their way toward him. 31 Meanwhile
his disciples urged him,
Rabbi, eat something. 32 But he said to them, I have food to eat
that you know nothing about.33 Then his disciples said to each other, Could someone have
brought him food? 34
My food, said Jesus, is
to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Do you not say, Four months more and then the
harvest? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for
harvest. 36 Even now the reaper
draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for
eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be
glad together. 37 Thus the saying
One sows and another reaps is true. 38
I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard
work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor. 39 Many of the
Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the womans testimony, He told me
everything I ever did. 40 So
when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he
stayed two days. 41 And because of
his words many more became believers. 42 They said to the woman, We no longer
believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we
know that this man really is the Savior of the world.
Question for Reflection:
The Exodus reading reveals Gods divine provision of water
a necessity for life. The Gospel reading
pictures Jesus seeking to give the Samaritan woman streams of living
water. Here we see the physical and
spiritual side of our human existence.
We are a sacramental people we need both the physical and the
spiritual. Even those who dont know
Jesus Christ as Lord and even those who say they dont want to know Him are
people who need to know their Creator. Please read all of the readings out loud in
your group and then focus in on the Gospel reading. What do you notice about how Jesus approaches
those who are lost? What can it teach
us? My sermon notes would also be
helpful to stimulate this reflection and subsequent discussion.