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.
Some of us have missed great blessings because we’re so committed to quenching our thirst in tried and true ways. We run to relationships, or alcohol and drugs. We become co–dependent, abdicating the responsibility of thinking for ourselves, or even feeling our own feelings, and taking on the thoughts and feelings of others. We become addiction addicts, addicted to this, to that, or countless combinations in order to try and quench the thirst that incessantly cries out for relief.
We know from the following verses that one of the woman’s issues was relationships with men. Married five times, she tried to find relief over and over again. But she was also tied to family traditions. They had the potential to keep her from the very thing she longed for.
What Jesus said to the woman, he says to us...
v.13-14 The old ways don’t work. You have to keep coming back. We get high, and for awhile forget our problems, or find courage to take a risk and see it pay off. We do it again and again, but each time the return for our investment diminishes. So we try harder and harder, doing it over and over, but instead of relief, we get more and more dry, and thus more and more thirsty.
How many times have we tried and tried to get relief from the same things that no longer work. Even good things, like quiet times, or going to church, etc. Jesus brings us to this point where we’re confronted with the futility of our efforts.
He invites us to see Him for who he really is.
He invites us to let go of our ways to find satisfaction, to give up our attempts to draw water.
Sometimes he does it through the Holy Spirit, sovereignly working in our lives. Other times he works through people, members of the body of Christ coming up to us, in the power of the Spirit, sometimes with the gifts of the Spirit, to speak that truth into our lives. He pursues us, seeking us out, calling to us, until we are ready to open up that area of our lives. Jesus got the woman’s attention, and she invites him give her the better water, the one that truly satisfies. He will come, he will do it, but only at your invitation.
C. Invitation to allow Christ into the areas of our Brokenness.
v.15 The woman asks
v.16 Jesus opens up the key area, the one, most sensitive place, where she has most walled up.
"Go, call your husband..." Husband? O no! Husband? I’ve had 5, and they never worked out. The most sensitive place in her life, the place where she experienced the most failure and shame.
THIS NEXT POINT IS CRITICAL...WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN THE HOLY SPIRIT REVEALS A WOUNDED PLACE IN THE HEART?
v.17 She could have said, OK and left. She could have turned away. But she didn’t . She stayed there in the presence of Jesus. And confessed. I HAVE NO HUSBAND.
When we confess, when we agree with Jesus that we’re hopelessly defeated in a certain area, we’re allowing Christ to enter into that place of brokenness.
v.17–18 The whole conversation, the great need of Christ to come through Samaria, the pursuit of Christ that lead him out from successful ministry in Judea to come here, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, here a word of knowledge, or perhaps prophecy, was all designed to bring her to this point. And give the woman some credit, she didn’t
back away. How many of us do? When we face something too painful,
do we revert back to our old ways when the spirit is clearly prompting us to look at it, examine it, and bring it to him.
Painful, uncomfortable place to be. v.19–20 reflects some of the woman’s discomfort. She tried to change the subject. When God catches us in the blinding light of his the power and presence we often try to squirm, avoid the subject, run away. We don’t like being there, but our Shepherd is relentless. Once you invite him to address an area, he is not content until you begin to look like him. How does he do it...
D. Invitation to enter His Presence and Worship (v.21-26)
Jesus invited her to see him for who he really is. Why?
He invited her to give up the inferior things, things that don’t really satisfy. Why? In order to get the best, you have to give up the rest.
What was he wanting for her and us.
v. 21-24
True Worship
A. God is Father
Let’s look at just one of the passages in John that give us a glimpse of Jesus relationship with the Father...John 5:19-23
1. Ministry flows from watching God work v. 19
2. The Father loves us and wants us to see what he’s doing. v.20
3. The Father and Son’s work mirror each other. v. 21
4. The father gives his sons work that he could do, but defers to them. v. 22
5. The father does this so that the son may receive Glory just as the father does. v. 23
Jesus is inviting us into his relationship with God where we share his work, his intimacy, his glory.
cf. John 17: 20-26
It’s hard to imagine, with this invitation, that anyone would turn away from it. But she does. v. 25
Jesus responds I AM!
I AM...Faithful and true
Lover of your soul
Compassionate and merciful
Slow to anger
The good Shepherd will lays down his life for you.
Lonely
I AM closer than a brother
Forsaken?
I AM the One who will never leave you
Hurting?
I AM the one who comforts you.
