We are all, to one degree or another, thirsty souls.
Our hearts thirst for many things. We thirst for what we had and lost in the beginning.
If you have a yard or a flower bed or garden or land, don’t you wish it were free of weeds and would just stay free of weeds, that you could just have grass and the plants that you plant.
Some of you, I’m sure, wish you didn’t have to work so much just to make a living.
We thirst for better marriages, better friendships, better relationships.
Many of you are, and the rest of us will probably soon be, longing for good health, to be free of cancer, free of arthritis, free of migraines, free of joint pain and all the rest of our afflictions.
I remember when the thirst for deliverance from death really hit me. I was somewhere between 7 and 9 years old. Though I was at Pizza Hut with grandma I was just depressed, because for some reason the reality of my own future death had dawned on me and I couldn’t get it out of my little mind. I remember praying for what I thought was all I could hope for, that God would at least let me live 100 years. Many people never escape that fear and sadness, knowing death is coming for them. And when it takes our loved ones it leaves gaping holes in us. We thirst for deliverance from death.
We thirst for answers and understanding.
A misery Job had, right up there with losing his kids and his wealth and his health, was not understanding why; when he had been serving God in his life.
Solomon in Ecclesiastes 4 writes about the injustice and oppression he sees in the world, how the wicked too often are in power and prosperous, and the righteous are suffering. And it depressed him because he didn’t see how God could allow it or if he was going to make it right.
Many long to know where they came from, why they’re here, what is the point, is there a point, what should they do with their lives. They long for answers.
Some hate who they see in the mirror. They hate being enslaved to alcohol or pornography or terrible eating habits. They hate their lack of self-control. They hate their hot temperedness and dishonesty and how they have hurt people and neglected loved ones. They thirst to be a better person and for deliverance from their shame and their guilt.
Much of the book of Ecclesiastes in the OT is about Solomon’s search for a quencher of the thirst of the human soul. If there was any man in a position to find a quencher it was Solomon; wisest, wealthiest, most prosperous king before Jesus there’s ever been. He wrote in essence, “I have on tap the water from every well in the world to which people go to quench the thirst. I have wealth like you cannot imagine, all status, all power anyone could hope to attain, and fame and honor and respect. I have all the women a man could ever want. I have cellars of the finest wine, the world’s best comedians and musicians on call, and every pleasurable or entertaining thing you can imagine. And I have filled myself from every one of these wells, and have discovered it’s all rather salty water. It looks like it may quench, there’s a moment it feels good when you drink it, but then it leaves you thirstier than you were before.” Ecclesiastes 2:17, after drinking from every well of the world, he wrote, “So I hated life.” And 2:18, “I hated all my toil… because pretty soon I’ll be taking a dirt nap and everything I’ve attained will likely go to some lazy fool who doesn’t deserve it and will misuse it.” He writes in Ecclesiastes 5:10, “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money…” No matter how much you drink from that well, it will never quench the thirst of your heart.
Is your soul thirsty? I’m still a bit thirsty, but I’m not as thirsty as I used to be. I’m not looking forward to fighting the noxious weeds on my land this spring as the letter in the mail told me I have to. I wish my tailbone wasn’t so sore after the fall I took the other day. (I forgot about the window well behind me as I was walking backwards.) There are answers and understandings I still thirst for. I thirst for more righteousness. I still find selfishness and pride and ugliness in myself that I want to be rid of. But I’m not miserably thirsty anymore. I’m not thirsting for deliverance from death and guilt or for meaning and purpose in life or for as many answers, because I found this fountain and I’ve been drinking fresh wonderful water. Some of you know exactly what I’m talking about because you’ve found and drank from the same fountain. For you I hope the lesson will reaffirm what you’ve found and show you more of its value and spare you the futility of trying to quench your thirst from another source. If there are miserably thirsty souls listening, I pray you’ll hear the message of John 4 and not just with your ears.
We’re going to look at a true story in John 4 of a thirsty lady’s discovery of the true thirst quencher. We won’t look at the whole story this morning, just 4:1-19.
Verses 1-6 introduce the scene.
Setting the Scene (verses 1-6)
You find in the gospels that Jesus had somewhat of a schedule He was keeping in His ministry. There was a plan and an order to the things He was doing. There was a time for gaining and training disciples and teaching the multitudes. There was a time for dealing with Pharisees and there was a time for this and that. And there was a time to finally confess Himself to be the Messiah to His enemies and to die. Well, at this point in his ministry, it’s not yet time to deal with Pharisees. And so John 4:1 says, “Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee.” He knows the Pharisees are going to want to talk to Him, but He’s got other things He wants to do first before He deals with them. So He leaves Judea in the south to head to Galilee in the north. It was these two regions where the Jews lived primarily and where Jesus spent most of His time. In between those two regions was another region called Samaria.
Verse 4 is interesting to me. It says, “And he had to pass through Samaria.” If you were a 1st century Jew reading this, you would say, “Why? Why did He have to pass through Samaria?” It was not a geographical necessity. You could go around Samaria on the east side of the Jordan River. Which I read is commonly what Jews would do when they traveled between Judea and Galilee. It would take them an extra day or two to go around Samaria but that was a common route, because of the animosity between Jews and Samaritans. They hated each other. Some Jewish Rabbis back then would say if you see a Samaritan woman trying to give birth you are not to help her, because we don’t want any more Samaritans in the world.
The hatred went way back.
In the 8th century B.C., during the time when the Israelites were divided into two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south, Israel in the north had drifted so far from God and would not repent that God gave them into the hands of the Assyrians. The Assyrians deported most of the population of Israel, scattered them in various places of the empire. But they let the poorest of the Israelites stay in the land. Then they imported into the land people of other nations they had conquered. And in disobedience to God’s law, those Israelites who remained in the land intermarried with their new pagan neighbors.
In the 6th century B.C. after Judah in the south had also been conquered and taken into exile by the Babylonians for 70 years, but then were allowed to come back to their land, and they were rebuilding the temple, Samaritans came down and said, “Hey brothers. Let us help you.” And the Jews said, “No way. You guys have intermarried with pagans and forfeited your Israelite heritage. You are no longer the people of God with us.” There the bitterness began.
The bitterness intensified as the Samaritans decided to build their own temple on Mt. Gerizim and have their own priests and sacrificial system contrary to what the Scriptures said about where the temple was to be built and who were to be the priests and such. The temple on Mt. Gerizim was an abomination to the Jews. A century before Jesus was born the Jews were at war with the Greeks, and Samaritans sided with Jews’ enemies and Jewish forces destroyed their temple and ravaged their territory. So they hated one another.
It was not a geographical necessity, but Jesus had to pass through Samaria. It wasn’t a time necessity either. We find He hung out here for a couple days because some of the locals asked Him to stay. It was not a geographical necessity nor a time necessity. I think it was more a following the Spirit’s lead/building the kingdom necessity that He go through Samaria. God wanted Him to do a little work here in Samaria.
5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.
I’m glad for verses like this. Our Almighty Creator in a human body, Jesus, was weary. He was worn out. He needed to sit down and rest. We’ll find He was thirsty. It tells me God did not just put on a flesh suit for a while. He didn’t just wear a human flesh costume for a while. He actually emptied Himself, became a human being like us. He would get worn out, hunger, thirst, I think His legs would cramp up just like ours. So He totally understands, when we suffer and struggle in our bodies. He knows all about what it’s like to be us.
It’s the sixth hour, presumably by Jewish time. It’s high noon. It’s the Middle East. It’s hot.
The offer of living water to a thirsty woman (verses 7-15)
7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water.
Have you ever carried water? It’s heavy stuff, isn’t it? It’s hard work. So generally women would come to draw water in the cool of the morning or the cool of the evening (cf. Genesis 24:11). Who comes in the heat of the day to draw water? Well, a lady who doesn’t want to be around the other ladies would. As the story progresses we’ll find that’s likely why this woman came to the well at this time. This woman has been with a lot of men. She’s had five husbands. She’s now living with a boyfriend. I imagine she wasn’t very popular with the local ladies.
This woman is the mirror opposite of Nicodemus in John 3 that we talked about last Sunday. A Pharisee, member of the Sanhedrin, teacher of Israel, professor of theology, very respected, very pure and godly looking. This woman is the other end of the spectrum, at least on the surface. That was Mr. Religion. This is Ms. Irreligion . Maybe you couldn’t really identify with the Pharisees we were talking about last Sunday. Your upbringing and background was not going to church, reading the Bible, praying and thinking highly of yourself for not being a part of the partying, drinking, cussing, sleeping around crowd. Maybe you were part of that crowd, like this woman. Your sinfulness has not been hidden in your heart but blatant and obvious for people to see.
I think these two stories are right next to each other to make this point – Jesus came for both kinds of people and everyone in between. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, what your background is, Jesus’ offer is to you.
So Jesus doesn’t ignore this woman. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” Sounds kind of bossy to us. But it wasn’t at all disrespectful. It was a shocking and kind request.
8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew [which she could discern by his clothing and the way He talked], ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” ( For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
Let alone the whole Jew/Samaritan issue, it was also against the social etiquette of the day just for a man to speak with a woman not in his family in public. That’s why when the disciples came back with lunch at verse 27 they marveled to find that He was talking with a woman.
The phrase “have no dealings with” many scholars believe is better translated, “use nothing in common with”. In other words, Jews would not use the same cup or dish that a Samaritan had used, because they regarded Samaritans as unclean and thought to eat or drink from a vessel they used would make you unclean. Jesus’ request implies, “I’m not your typical Jew. I disagree with our culture in ways. I don’t think the same way about you Samaritans. I’ll share a cup with you.”
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
“Living water” was a common Hebrew idiom in the day for running water as opposed to stagnant, living water was from a spring or stream. Her mind must have been racing. “Here is a man who has nothing to draw water with. The well is deep. And now He is offering me living water. There’s no other streams or springs around here. What is he talking about? And, doesn’t He know that this is good water, there’s nothing wrong with this water?
11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”
13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, …”
And you know what? Same goes for the water of every well in the world. You think that the expensive water in the parking lot of the Kalispell Toyota Dealership looks satisfying. So you work hard and save up, and you’re imagining how good it will feel to drink some of that water. Finally you’re able to buy a drink at the Toyota Dealership and you’re so excited. You go and pay and drink a new Tacoma or a new Forerunner. And it is a delicious and pleasant experience and you leave feeling some satisfaction. But how long was it until life was back to as dull as it was before? How long until you were just as thirsty as before? Was it a month later when you got your first bill? Was it about when the kids replaced the new car smell with all sorts of other smells? Or when a shopping cart ran into the side of it? Or when you just got used to it and bored with it? There is no water in the world you can drink and not be thirsty again.
14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again [He’s claiming to have eternally satisfying water. And He says,] The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
You drink the water from Jesus and it doesn’t pass through you and leave you thirsty again. It stays in you and then miraculously multiplies itself, grows like a spring. It quenches and satisfies a bit and then increases itself, quenching and satisfying you more, and it continues to well up and quench more and more of your thirst and continues until you reach “eternal life”… which I’ve got to tell you something about.
Eternal life just sounds like going on living forever and ever, never dying. But the phrase is far more wonderful and awesome than that. The word translated “eternal” aionios does not really mean eternal. I invite you to look into it, because I don’t want you to just take my word for stuff. It’s a combination of “aion” which means age or eon, and “ios” which means pertaining to, relating to, belonging to. So eternal life in the original text is more literally, life pertaining to the age, life of the age. And it means life in the age to come. The NT often speaks of two ages. It’s speaks of this present age in which we are now living. And then it speaks of the age to come, the age that will be ushered in when Christ comes back. The age to come is when the kingdom of God has fully come, when everything has been fixed and cleaned and restored and everything is the way God has wanted it to be. Everything our hearts thirst for is in the age to come. No more weeds, no more having to work so much and so hard, no more strife, no more disease, no more frailty and hurting, no more death, no more thirsting for answers and understanding, no more sin, no more shame. Those who get to live in the age to come will thirst no more. Their hearts will be, completely, permanently satisfied. That’s what the Bible means when it speaks of eternal life, not just not dying, but life in the age to come, life in the kingdom of God.
The water Jesus gives comes into us and stays and quenches and satisfies some and then will continue to satisfy increasingly more, ever welling up in us more love and righteousness and hope and joy and peace and understanding, until we reach the age to come where we will fully forever be satisfied.
If you’re hesitant to fully embrace Jesus and do whatever He tells you, then you don’t get this. You think the wells of the world will quench your thirst more than the one who made you. You think you will miss out, life will be duller, harder, if you fully embrace Jesus and His will in your life. You don’t realize that He is the thirst quencher your heart longs for. He gives the living soul quenching water you cannot find anywhere else.
What is this living water exactly?
Two passages. One, a prophecy in Isaiah. And the other, another passage in John.
Isaiah 44:3, in a section of Isaiah that is saying much about what would happen in the time when the Messiah has come. “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground [He’s not talking about literal H2O or literal ground. The rest of the verse explains.]; I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.” The blessing Spirit of God is the living water, the only water that can quench the thirst of your soul. And it is Jesus who gives it.
John 7:37-39, “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” The fruit of the Spirit, what the Spirit will steadily well up inside of you as you continue to believe in and follow Jesus is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control… You will become less and less thirsty. But you are a miserably thirsty soul without the blessing Spirit of God working in your heart and life.
The woman at the well hears about this miraculous water and I think she responds sarcastically in verse 15…”Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
Jesus has to give her some evidence that he’s not just a loony Jew. So He says, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet…” Then she quickly changed the subject to something more comfortable to talk about than her sex life. We’ll stop there with the story this morning.
But notice Jesus knew all her secrets but He still offered her the living water.
If Jesus was talking at the well to someone who’s been dishonest and cheating on their taxes, He could have said, “Go get you last three years of tax returns and come here.” “Oh, I don’t have them.” And He could say, “Yes you do. They’re in this place and they say this, but should pay this.” And He could tell you all about it. Or He could say, “Go print off your internet viewing history.” “Oh, I don’t have it.” And He could say, “Actually that’s true, because you deleted it, because it had this and that and this and that on it.” Whoever you are, He knows all … But He still offers you the living water.
He wants to fully and forever quench the thirst of your heart.
You know how the Bible ends? Right before the warning about adding or taking away from this book. Revelation 22:17, “The Spirit and the Bride [the church] say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” The living soul quenching water is free. You may not think it’s free. You’ve probably sat through enough sermons to know that Jesus says we must surrender control of our lives to Him, let Him run things now in our life. And you might think that’s costly, that’s expensive. If so, you don’t realize you’re exerting all this time and energy digging wells where there’s no water, and you’re going to salty puddles. When Jesus calls you to surrender and follow Him, He’s in essence saying, “Quit wasting your time and effort trying to find good water where you’re not going to find it. I will lead you to all the wonderful fresh water you could ever want, and I’ve got some bottles of it to sustain you until we get there. Now come on.” The water of life is free, though you need to give up your vain search for water in this world.
Like the song we sing, “Thirsty soul hear the welcome call. There’s a fountain open for all. There’s a fountain free, tis for you and me. Let us haste, oh haste, to its brink. ‘Tis the fount of love from the source above, and bids us all freely drink.”
He is the true thirst quencher. We drink as we follow Him in our lives.
-James Williams