March 8, 2026 – Lent – God Among Us

God Among Us

Exodus 17:1-7 - New International Version (NIV)

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 Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Where did the Israelite community “set out from” (verse 1)?

What was missing at Rephidim (verse 1)?

Who did the Israelite people put “to the test” (verse 2)?

In your opinion, did the Israelite people really expect to “die of thirst” (verse 3)?

What did Moses think the people were “almost ready” to do (verse 4)?

What was Moses to take with him (verse 5)?

Who will stand with Moses when he strikes the rock (verse 6)?

Why was the place called “Massah and Meribah” (verse 7)?

In your opinion, what is the basic message of this passage?

In your opinion, what does this passage teach us about how people relate to God?

Psalm 95 – New International Version (NIV)

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.’”

How should we sing “to the Lord” (verse 1)?

How should we “come before him” (verse 2)?

What is “the Lord” (verse 3)?

Where are the “depths of the earth” (verse 4)?

Why is the sea His (verse 5)?

How should we worship (verse 6)?

What are “we” (verse 7)?

What should Israel not do as was done“at Meribah” (verse 8)?

What had Israel’s ancestors seen (verse 9)?

How long was the Lord “angry with that generation” (verse 10)?

What had the Lord declared (verse 11)?

In your opinion, what is the basic message of this passage?

In your opinion, what does this passage teach us about how people relate to God?

In your opinion, how is the Israelite question, “Is the Lord among us or not?” in Exodus 17:1-7 answered in Psalm 95?

John 4:5-(7-26)-42 – New International Version (NIV)

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 livestock?”

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. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

²¹ “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, 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 the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the 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, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

Who did Jesus ask to give him a drink (verse 7)?

Who did Jews not associate with (verse 9)?

What did Jesus tell the woman that He could give her (verse 10)?

Why was the woman skeptical (verse 11)?

In your opinion, why is the woman’s question the right question for her to ask (verse 12)?

Why will the one who “drinks the water” Jesus gives them not thirst again (verses 13 and 14)?

How does the woman’s question show that she does not understand what Jesus is offering (verse 15)?

How does Jesus move the woman on from thinking about well water (verse 16)?

What does Jesus reveal about the man the woman is currently with (verse 18)?

What does the woman understand about Jesus (verse 19)?

How does the woman try to put distance between herself and Jesus (verse 20)?

How does Jesus remove that distance (verse 21)?

What time “has now come” (verse 23)?

How must God be worshipped (verse 24)?

Who does the woman know is coming (verse 25)?

What does Jesus claim (verse 26)?

In your opinion, what is the basic message of this passage?

In your opinion, what does this passage teach us about how people relate to God?

In your opinion, how does Jesus in John 4:7-26 provide the Samaritan woman the answer that the Israeltes were seeking in Exodus 17:1-7 when they tested God with, “Is the Lord among us or not?”?

In your opinion, how would you compare what the Israelite people in Psalm 95 “had seen” God do with what the Samaritan woman saw in John 4:7-16?

Romans 5:1-11 – New International Version (NIV)

¹ 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 boast in the hope of the glory of God. ³ Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵ And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to 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 person, though for a good person 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.

⁹ Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! ¹⁰ For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! ¹¹ Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

How do “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (verse 1)?

What do we “boast in” (verse 2)?

What do we “glory in” (verse 3)?

Why does hope “not put us to shame” (verse 5)?

When did Christ “die for the ungodly” (verse 6)?

What will anyone “very rarely” do (verse 7)?

How does God demonstrate “his own love for us” (verse 8)?

What will those who are “justified by his blood” be saved from (verse 9)?

How are God’s enemies “reconciled to him” (verse 10)?

Who do Christians boast in through their “Lord Jesus Christ” (verse 11)?

In your opinion, what is the basic message of this passage?

In your opinion, what does this passage teach us about how people relate to God?

In your opinion, how was the Lord providing water for those who were testing Him in Exodus 17:1-7 like Jesus dying for sinners in Romans 5:1-11?

In your opinion, how does Psalm 95 provide guidance to reconciled sinners as described in Romans 5:1-11 about how they should to respond to God?

In your opinion, how does Romans 5:1-11 help us understand Jesus’s offer of living water to the Samaritan woman of John 4:7-26?

In your opinion, what do these passages from Exodus, Psalms, John, and Romans reveal to us about how God relates to people?

In your opinion, how do we see God among us today?

(sprucewhispers.blogspot.com)