LET’S PRAY
Father we ask for Your anointing on us today. Place Your anointing on me as Your messenger today. God move in our lives. Help us to see things the way they are and understand that we need to prepare for the day you send your Son to bring us home. Rip open the heavens and visit Your people today.
Open our eyes so that we may see Your Word. Open our ears so that we may hear Your Word. Open our minds so that we may understand Your Word. Open our hearts so that we may receive Your Word today.
AMEN
Last week I shared John 7:37-39 with you.
It was after the Feast of the Tabernacles and Jesus said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him…” John 7:37-39
In today’s message we will hear that same thought. It was something that Jesus said to a woman he met in Samaria before the events of John 7.
Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem for the Passover. The trip was long and Jesus and the disciples were hungry and ready from some rest.
They stopped at a place in Samaria that was known as Jacob’s well. This land and this well have some important past history. It was land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
Jacob had bought this land after reuniting with his brother Esau after years of separation. It was in the land of Canaan and he bought it for 100 pieces of silver from the sons of Hamor. He set up an alter on this ground and called it El Elohe Israel.
El is the name by which God is called in the Old Testament.
It is used as El Elyon, which means, “the Most High God.”
It is used as El Shaddai, which means, “God Almighty.”
It is used as El Hai, which means the, “the Living God.”
And in Genesis 33:20 it is El Elohe Israel, which means, “the Mighty God of Israel.
Just as the place they met had some history, this woman at the well had some history also. She had a reputation in her town as being an immoral woman. She was morally bankrupt. She had been living a life of sin.
She was a woman who was searching for something but always ended up looking for the answers in the wrong places.
Because of her current and past lifestyle I am sure that people looked down upon her. I am sure they condemned her. People would talk about her when she passed by, they would gossip about her and pass judgment upon her. She was ashamed of herself and her reputation.
All she wanted was to be loved.
She is not that much different that any of us here today.
SHOW VIDEO, I Am A Woman (Sermon Spice)
Here was this Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well to draw water and she meets up with Jesus. Was it an accidental meeting? I don’t think it was.
Isn’t it awesome that Jesus is always were He needs to be at the time He needs to be there?
Jesus had never met this woman before and yet He knew her life. How did He know?
He was and is the El Elohe Israel, the Mighty God of Israel. He is El Elyon, El Shaddai, and He is El Hai.
Normally the women would come to draw water from the well earlier in the day and they would accompany each other.
This Samaritan woman came to the well later in the day and alone. We can speculate that her reputation was the cause of this loneliness. It was also probably the reason she was so surprised when Christ asked her for a drink although she gave another reason.
Jesus was a Jew and she was a Samaritan and the two did not get along. The reason for the bad feelings was due to the religious differences between the two people that were serious and deep-rooted.
They went back to the days of the Babylonian captivity hundreds of years before the birth of Christ.
The Jewish people feared any kind of relationship with the Samaritans and by asking a Samaritan for any kind of favor would mean ritualistic defilement fir the Jew.
Jesus was thirsty and did not have anything to draw the water from the well with; this woman came to draw water from the well, but if she complied with His request, He would have to drink from her vessel and those things just didn’t happen. He was risking ceremonial pollution because she was a Samaritan and because she was a woman.
His request caught her off guard. He asked her for a drink knowing who she was, what she had done, and where her life was going. Those things were not the issue. Jesus didn’t care about those things.
The issue was and is not who she was but rather who she was talking to. Jesus knew her but she did not know Him. The Messiah was sitting before her, asking her for a drink and she was spiritually blind and could not see who He was.
Once again this is like so many people in our world today. People who are searching for something and yet they don’t get it. Even though it is right before their eyes, they fail to perceive it. God moves in a church or in a community and people are saved and healed and miracles take place and so many people don’t get it. They fail to grasp the move of God.
“Jesus answered her, If you had only known and had recognized God’s gift and Who this is that is saying to you, Give Me a drink, you would have asked Him [instead] and He would have given you living water.” John 4:10 Amplified
Had she known who was sitting with her at the well and what He could offer, she would asked Jesus for a drink first and He would have given something to her that would have been unlike anything she had ever experienced.
Here they are in a land that is prone to droughts, water is appreciated as a true gift from God. It is of the utmost importance.
He wanted a drink of water and yet Jesus offers this woman a greater gift of God than any earthly spring could bring forth. He offered the woman “living water.”
What is the living water? God is the living water.
God is self-described as the Fountain of Living Waters.
“My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me the fountain of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” Jeremiah 2:13
At their best the waters in the wells and in the cisterns of that time was filled with stagnant water. The only outlet was at the top. The water that Jesus spoke of was living water, which speaks of water that is continually flowing.
Jacob’s well is different than other wells and cisterns, it is fed by underground springs, and its water is fresh and cool. Because the water is moving and not from a cistern, the ancients called it “living water.” It was this term to which Jesus gave a new and special meaning.
This woman needed a relationship with the Living God. This woman had religious knowledge. She knew all about the past, she knew all about Jacob, she knew about the people coming to worship God. She even knew the prophecies concerning the coming of the Messiah. She had the head knowledge but she lacked the heart knowledge.
She needed the Living Water.
All her life she had been searching for something and now it was right before her eyes. She was talking to the Messiah and it was beginning to click in her mind and in her heart.
She still has some questions, she still had some things to work out and while she was processing the events as they were unfolding, Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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.” John 4:13-14
When people would drink from the sweet water of Jacob’s well they would eventually become thirsty again.
This woman was tired of not finding the answers that she was searching for. She was tired of living with the reputation of being a woman of many men. She craved something more. She craved satisfaction and Jesus is offering her the very thing she needs.
Jesus begins to dig deeper into the woman’s life. He begins to reveal things about her. He reveals her sinful condition.
Before anyone can be saved they must first see the need of their salvation. They must come to a point in their lives that they are convicted of their sins and they want to be set free from them.
This Samaritan woman was at that point in her life. Up to this point she was a slave to sin and in bondage to her past.
She was ready for more. She was ready to turn from a useless life to a life of worship so she asks Jesus where should she worship. She wants to know where she had to go to get close to God and what did she have to do.
Jesus revealed something very important to her. Where she worshipped was not the main thing, the fact that she was willing to worship God and renew her walk with Him; that was important.
All she needed to do was “worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.”
Being a follower of God and worshipping Him is not confined to a place. I can worship God in the sanctuary, on the golf course, in my car, hunting pheasants, walking with my wife, and any other place I choose to worship Him.
Worshipping God and serving God is an action of the heart. When our hearts are right were they should be then our desire to worship God and serve God is going to be right.
Jesus was introducing a new day to the people of His time. They were not going to be able to continue doing things the same way. It was time for something new.
It was time to get away from the religious thought of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law and it was time to build a right relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
It was time to worship in spirit and truth, the truth being the revealed Word of God.
The Samaritan woman liked what she was hearing. It excited her to know that the answer to life’s questions was within her grasp.
Even though this man that she did not know was confronting her about her life, she was hooked. She had an emptiness inside her that needed to be filled.
She could have run away from the confrontation. That is what Adam and Eve did. God found them.
The Samaritan woman stayed and began to reveal more of herself to Him. She opened up her life to Christ.
Reveal more of ourselves to Him? Open our life to Him?
That is what we need to do. Instead of hiding from God, instead of running from God, instead of ignoring God we need to say, “Lord despite all of my imperfections, here I am. Despite my sinfulness, here I am. Despite my vulnerabilities, here I am. Despite my helplessness and insecurities, here I am. Even, despite myself, here I am.”
The truth is, if we ever want to be fed by Christ, if we ever want that deep longing in our soul to be filled to over flowing then we must be able to stand toe to toe with Jesus and admit who we are.
The more we run the emptier we will feel. The emptier we are the more that needs to be filled in our lives.
Contrary to what the world says, nothing else will fill the empty spots in our lives adequately. No accomplishment, relationship, wealth, or status will ultimately satisfy us because the shape of our hunger is the shape of God.
It is the missing piece to the puzzle.
This woman was thirsty in a way that she did not understand. That was what Jesus had been talking about all along: “I can give you life itself. If you knew who was speaking, if you knew the gift of God, you would ask to have your heart’s longing, your spiritual deprivation met, and he would meet it for you.”
She was still a little confused, she still didn’t quite understand what was happening, but she was ready to drink in the living water. She was tired of living an empty, meaningless life.
Life without God truly is an empty life.
Think about all He offers us.
Eternal life.
Forgiveness of sins.
Freedom from bondage.
Healing.
So many blessings we cannot fathom.
Every one of our needs met.
Wisdom.
Mercy.
Grace.
Relationships.
He promises that He will always be there.
He promises that we don’t have to go through things alone.
When we take Jesus up on this offer and drink of the living water all these things and more belong to us.
We all need this living water, this fulfillment and satisfaction and peace and joy.
So where are you thirsty?
Where are you feeling unsatisfied?
Where are you felling tempted?
Where are you driven? Are you a workaholic, shopaholic?
Because these things are often symptoms of thirst and we need to discover more of the Living Water.
Today we need to realize that God loves everyone. He doesn’t care about what you’ve done. When He looks at people He sees thirsty people who need the Living Water the He alone offers to satisfy your thirsty souls.
Drink of the Living Water today and allow the new thing that God wants to do in your life to come to fulfillment.
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