Can you believe it? We are only 6 weeks away from Easter, one of the most celebrated Christian holidays. The Lord laid it on my heart to talk about what Jesus has done for us as we lead up to the Easter season.
Today, let's think about all that Jesus has done for us. When I think about what Jesus has done for me, it's quite a long list. But one of the things that continues to come to my mind is how Jesus fulfills and supplies our spiritual needs. Jesus called it "living water."
On Wednesday nights, we've been studying the Gospel of John. A couple of months ago we spent quite time talking about the Samaritan woman at the well. I want to look briefly at that story today because every time I read or think about this story, I remember how Jesus quenched my dry Spirit when I needed it the most.
Our physical thirst tells us when we need water, but our lives tell us how much more we need eternal living water. And this living water isn't found in a bottle or a fountain. And just like the Samaritan woman whom Jesus encountered at the well, we find that living water only when we meet the One who knows us better than we know ourselves. Prayer.
We will be using John chapter 4 today for our passage. In verse 7 we are invited into this passage by the words "a woman of Samaria". We don't know her name, but we do know where she was from, and where she is from tells us a lot about her.
Just before these verses we see that Jesus chose to travel this path. He and His disciples were heading out of Judea and back to Galilee. The fastest route between the two cities was to go through an area called Samaria. Even though this was the fastest route, it wasn't always the most traveled route for Jews. I have mentioned before the long history of the animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans. As a rule, they didn't like each other very much. Some scholars suggest that the Jews would often take a much longer route to Galilee to avoid even traveling through Samaria. That wasn't the case with Jesus on this day.
John 4:7-14 – “A woman of Samaria came to draw water. “Give me a drink,” Jesus said to her, 8 because his disciples had gone into town to buy food. 9 “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” she asked him. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. 10 Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.” 11 “Sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’? 12 You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.” 13 Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”
From age 12 to age 17 I hauled hay every summer for my friend's dad on his ranch between San Antonio and Floresville. You haven't worked until you haul hay. You can't start hauling hay until the ground dries out. That means you start about noon. One of the hottest points of the day. We would haul 100 bales at a time from the field into the barn. After each trip you were very thirsty. But you had to learn that you must drink water a sip at a time or you will get very sick from drinking it too fast. And then about halfway through the next load you were thirsty again. I'm glad that the living water that Jesus offers causes me never thirst spiritually again.
We don't know exactly why the Samaritan woman came to the well at noon. But it's most likely because she was seen as an outcast, even among her own people. If that was the case, she had likely come at midday to be alone and avoid the looks or comments from the women who would come in the morning hours to get water. We will see later in this passage that she had some issues in her personal life that were likely the reason she was rejected by others.
But instead of being able to privately draw water, the woman was greeted with a request from a Jewish man. Nothing about this experience was making sense to her. "How is it that you ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For Jews do not associate with Samaritans."
Jesus was good at engaging in everyday conversations that would easily lead to conversation about eternal things, and this conversation was no different. As they begin to discuss something as simple as his human need for water, Jesus shifted the conversation to her eternal need for redemption. She thought they were talking about His need, but they were actually talking about her need.
The Samaritan woman was confused at first. She didn't understand how this man was going to give her water that would cause her to never thirst again. If Jesus was able to provide this water to her without anything to draw with, then he must know about another source of water, one that was much easier to access. She thought Jesus's statement was saying that He was claiming to be greater than the patriarch Jacob. She asked, "You aren't greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock."
It's at this point that the conversation turned. In just one sentence, Jesus shifted from the discussion about the physical to one about the eternal. He is greater than Jacob, not because He knows of another water source, but because He is the source.
John 4:15-18 – “Sir,” the woman said to him, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.” 16 “Go call your husband,” he told her, “and come back here.”17 “I don’t have a husband,” she answered. “You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus said. 18 “For you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
The woman thought she had found a secret source of water that would allow her to avoid the shame of coming to the well by herself each day. She had found an escape, she thought, from her embarrassment and from having to face the reality of her public sin. But then it hit. Jesus didn't point out the location of a running stream. Instead, Jesus, this stranger, identified her sin, a sin that she would prefer not to talk about. Jesus told her to go get her husband and bring him to the well. The Samaritan woman thought she could avoid the issue by admitting that she didn't have a husband, but she failed to realize who she was speaking with.
Most of us, when confronted with something shameful, we hide, or shy away from the truth. Most children, and we were no exception, when they know they have been caught doing or saying something wrong, hide themselves. We come by this behavior honestly because this is the way Adam and Eve handled their confrontation with God in the garden of Eden after they had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The Samaritan woman was no different. When Jesus told her to go call your husband, the woman admitted she didn't have a husband. But Jesus knew her situation. He spoke a truth about her, as a stranger, that he shouldn't have known.
That by itself should say something to us. There is nothing about us that Jesus does not know. You can't hide it. He created us and so He knows us. So often we fool ourselves into thinking we can hide our sin. We believe if we don't get caught and exposed publicly, no one really knows.
The reality is God always knows. Nothing catches Him by surprise. When Jesus initiated the conversation with the woman, He already knew her situation, her marital status, and her history. Knowing all of this did not prevent Him from meeting with her at the well. In fact, it may be the very reason that Jesus chose to travel through Samaria. It was certainly no accident that Jesus met this woman on this particular day, at this particular time, and under these particular circumstances. Jesus does this with every person He encounters. He meets them right where they are. And Jesus will meet you right now, right where you are in your life.
That is why we say when you are accepting Jesus as your Savior, that you admit to Him that you are a sinner. You confess your sins to Him. The word "confess" literally means to agree with. God already knows what we have done. He just wants us to agree with Him of what we did. They say confession he is good for the soul. Before we can correct something that we may have done wrong, we have to realize that we did something wrong and admit it.
Romans 3:23-24 says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."
A real encounter with Jesus will transform you. But before that transformation can take place, there's usually some type of pain, or shame, or confession involved. Yet it is that pain, shame, or confession that forces us to see our own need.
I like the way C. S. Lewis said it. "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
Pain definitely gets our attention and many times causes us to go to God in prayer. In this passage, the woman at the well had faced many misfortunes in her marital life. She had already had five husbands and was currently with a man who was not her husband. We don't know what actually happened to cause the breakup in those marriages.
Even in a modern world where marriage covenants are not held in high esteem, having five husbands is not viewed well even by our society. This would have been even more so in her day. In just a brief conversation, Jesus had pinpointed the place of pain and hurt in this woman's life. The good news is He had the remedy for her brokenness and pain. What is that remedy?
2 Corinthians 5:17 says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!"
And that's what Jesus does for us. When we accept Him as our very own, all of our past is in the past. Our spiritual life is made anew in Christ. The new has come.
Listen to this true story from a pastor. He said, "It was after a Sunday morning worship service, an 80-year-old church member introduced me to a young woman in her twenties. They were neighbors and the senior adult woman had invited her to be her guest that morning. I was thrilled, but honestly a bit surprised. What did this 80-year-old woman have in common with this 20 year old? My curiosity got the better of me, so I asked. The older woman had been bitten by the younger woman's dog, but instead of getting mad at her and reporting it, the senior adult invited her to church.
He said, I'm pretty sure the younger woman was feeling a bit guilty and may have agreed to come to church a few times just to keep things on good terms. But then something happened. The young woman heard the Gospel, felt convicted of her sin, repented, and trusted Jesus as her Savior.
Attending church and having her life completely transformed by Jesus was not on her agenda the day her dog got loose and bit her neighbor, but it was on God's agenda. Over the next few years, we watched this young woman grow in her faith, marry a godly man, and start a family. And it all began with someone who loves to share Jesus more than retribution.
We have looked at statistics before and found that 80% of people who are invited to church will show up. Jesus often engaged with the most unexpected people, like the woman from Samaria. Maybe each one of us should ask God for an opportunity to engage with someone unexpected today. You never know who God has placed in your path. Never read a book by its cover.
John 4:25-26 – “The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Jesus told her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.”
The Samaritan woman may not have known much about what it took to make a marriage work, and she may not have known a lot about the nature of worship, but she did know the Messiah would be coming. So, what she heard next would change her life, and eternity, forever.
Jesus told her, "I, the one speaking to you, am He." The man who had asked her to get Him a drink was the very One she had been waiting for. He knew her sin and shame and still took the time to engage with her. He would love her unconditionally. He, who just a few short years later, would die a criminal's death on the cross and be raised from the dead for her, and for us.
You know what? We all have needs. Every single one of us have needs. Some of them are physical, some emotional, some relational, but none of them is greater than our spiritual need, our need to be saved. People don't always recognize this need. Sometimes they go through life, attempting to fill this need with all sorts of other remedies, but the reality is that we all have a thirst that can only be satisfied by Jesus.
In Christian history, Augustine nailed it when he wrote this prayer, "You have made us for Yourself, oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You."
The woman at the well wasn't going to find rest in another husband nor in the water from a stream. She needed something supernatural. She needed something transformational. She needed something life-altering. And that was exactly what she found when Jesus met her at a well in the middle of the day.
That happened some 2,000 years ago. But the truth behind it all is still prevalent today. The more time we spend with Jesus, the more we realize what we really need is more of Him.
There have been so many times in my life when I have entered into prayer with a long list of "my needs," only to realize that my greatest need was just more of His presence in my life.
When the writer of Hebrews wrote that "God rewards those who seek him," he left it for the speaker to discover that the greatest reward Jesus can give is more of Himself and a deeper faith. What a reward that is!
Maybe your spirit is thirsty this morning. Have you been turning to other people, or activities, or other things to meet your needs that only Jesus can meet? If so, you need to go to God in prayer right now and thank Him for sending His Son to meet your greatest need. And then come and talk to me and I will pray with you and show you how easy it is to become a child of God.
