Filling The Longing Heart

Here is this woman. She shows up at the village well at the sixth hour. That’s noon, the hottest part of the day. The other women came that morning, when it was cooler. But she couldn’t come then. She didn’t want to see them. Really, she didn’t want them to see her. It would be too painful. Why? Because she’s living with some guy who’s not her husband, and the whole village knows it. She’s not proud of it. No, she’s ashamed. But she doesn’t move out because…what? This guy’s her meal ticket. He’s her insurance policy. He’s her security. And she comes to the well at noon…why? Better the heat of the sun than the blistering stares of the other women. She’s looking for safetby. But, the truth is, she doesn’t feel safe. And she isn’t really secure. The dude she’s living with could kick her out at any time. But what is she to do? This is the well from which she must now draw, empty as it is. She has a deep longing, a nagging thirst of the soul, and this is the only way she knows to try to satisfy it.

People you know are like that. Like this woman, what they really need is Jesus. They have a deep thirst for Him. They do not know it—at least, not yet—but they have a need that only He can fill. Sure, they turn to other sources, but the sources they turn to run dry. It may be achievement or power or security. It may be pleasure or comfort. It may be recognition or any number of other yearnings they long to fill. People look everywhere to find what they think will satisfy them. They thirst, but the thirst they have can be satisfied only by Jesus.

So, they need to hear about Jesus. And we need to tell them. We must tell them. Why? John gives us three reasons: We must tell them because of the great need. We must tell them because of the high calling. And we must tell them because of the gracious result.

I We Must Tell Them Because of the Great Need (John 4:5-29)

First, we must tell them because of the great need. We see this in verses 5 through 29. And we’ll notice in these verses three truths: (1) people need to meet Jesus; (2) people need to know Jesus; and (3) people need the change Jesus brings.

1. Like the woman in this passage, people need to meet Jesus. The woman comes to meet Jesus in verses 5 through 15, and in meeting Him, she begins to discover how He can meet the deepest need she has. She thinks that it is a felt need, the need for water. That’s why she has come to the well. But, in truth, it is a deeper need, one that tugs at her—that tugs at us all. It is the need for ‘living water’ (v. 10), by which Jesus means eternal life. Notice verses 13 and 14, where Jesus says to the woman, “Everyone who drinks of this water”—that is, the water she has come to draw—“will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.”

This is what we all long for. This is the only thing that will satisfy us. If people are to get their real needs met, they must meet Jesus.

2. And once they meet Him, they need to know Him. That’s what happens for this woman, and we see it happening in verses 16 through 26.

As we look at these verses, we see Jesus addressing three issues with the woman: (1) the matter of sin, (2) the matter of salvation, and (3) the matter of the Savior.

The first thing Jesus does is: He exposes the woman’s sinful lifestyle. He asks her to summon her husband. When she says she has no husband, Jesus concurs. He tells her she has had five husbands and the man she is now living with is not her husband. This seems to cause some discomfort for the woman—maybe even conviction of sin—and so she changes the subject to something not quite so personal. She raises the topic of worship. “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship” (v. 20).

Jesus, the master evangelist, weaves the woman’s distraction into a brief discourse on salvation. And He does it by accommodating this apparent interest in worship. Salvation, after all, is a matter not of where we worship but of whom we worship. Isn’t it? And Jesus says to the woman, “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation”—you see, there’s the word—“salvation is from the Jews” (v. 22). “We worship what we know,” Jesus says. Knowing the Father, ‘the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom [He has] sent’ (17:3) is at the heart of salvation. This woman does not yet know the true God or His Son Jesus Christ, but she is about to.