Christ The Living Waters

Introduction

I’d like to introduce you to a woman, who is a lot like us. All of us before we come face to face with our Creator is like this woman. In listening to her story, we discover our own story. As we see her receive something from God. we ourselves learn to receive from God. I want to introduce you to the woman at the well.

She didn’t know she was in need of Christ, she didn’t know she was dying of thirst. She didn’t realize that her life was parched, wilted and dry. She didn’t realize what she was hungering for,or that she was longing for an intimate partner, Jesus, the One who created her. All she knew was a unending sense of dissatisfaction, an unsettledness, an uneasiness. She had five husbands, each one different than the others, each one offering her a different balm or medicine to soothe her itch, to ease her anxiety. But none of them worked out. One maybe left her for another woman, another complained of irreconcilable differences. Still another she left because of the constant bickering. But though the excuses were all different, what was the same was her loneliness. Her awful loneliness. She came to the well alone, in the heat of the day, when it was so hot she knew no one else would be there. She came to draw water from Jacob’s well, which was deep. What she found was the Spring of Living Water, Jacob’s Creator, who touched her in the depths, the part of her heart no one else saw. In fact it was a part of her scarcely known by her herself. Let’s look at how our Lord brought her to that place, the place where he meets us in the deepest, most tender parts of our hearts, the place most wounded, most unredeemed.

A. Invitation to See Him for Who He IS (verses 7-10)

1. Jesus sees her as someone who he can receive ministry from.

a) v. 7-8 Even with her past, when Jesus was tired, he invited her, a woman, a Samaritan woman, a Samaritan woman with a past, to minister to Him.

b) v. 9 In her woundedness, she saw him as only another Jew, one other person to reject her.

c) APPLICATION: We do that as well. We look at our past, our besetting sins, and think that we can’t minister to the Lord, we’ve been disqualified. But Jesus seeks us out.(V. 1-6).

2. Jesus response to the woman: If you knew the gift of God...

a) v.10 Jesus basically says, if you knew who I am, you would have asked me for the balm that quenches your thirst, heals your hurts, binds your wounds. He is saying to the woman,You don’t know me!

When our hearts see God, who does it see?

When your heart sees me, it sees some one scary, or distant, or unavailable, or unconcerned, or angry, or violent, or unpredictable, or countless other adulterations, countless other negative permutations, that prevent you from seeing me as I am. Because if you knew the gift of God, and who it is who asks you for a drink, If you knew, if you really knew, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

When we’ve been rejected...we see him as rejecting.

When we’ve been judged harshly....as a harsh judge.

When wounded by anger...as someone angry.

How do we tell if this may be a problem? Jesus told the woman if she really knew, she would. In other words, you can tell by how you respond to God. Jesus says that we respond to God perfectly, based on how our hearts truly sees him. If you know in your head that God is your friend, yet find it hard to spend time with him...

Heads... Source of all our needs. Hearts...when in need we try to fix it .

Heads..He loves me with an infinite love...Heart...he’s distant, he hasn’t spoke to me.

We don’t come to God with our deepest hurts if we see him wrongly.

Jesus invites us to see him for who he really is.

B. Invitation to Let Go of Inferior Thirst Quenchers(v.11-14)

Samaritans and Jews were bitter rivals. Each one claimed the distinction of being the people of God.The Samaritans believed that their land, and especially Mount Gerazim, was particularly holy and set apart for God. They clung tenatiously to the traditions of their forefathers, hallowing the places that God appeared in the past. Hence Jacob, the father of Jews and Samaritans, was an important figure. His land, his well, which he had dug so long ago, was seen as special.

The Samaritan woman says to the Lord I have my traditions, my culture, my history, even Jacob’s well to draw water from. What do you have? You don’t even have anything to draw water from... What can you give to me.She was holding on to what she had, what she knew, what she thought would satisfy her. But Jesus invited her to drink from that which would truly satisfy.