Each one of us has a thirst that we are trying to satisfy with something. Often times we attempt to meet that need with food, alcohol, the internet, relationships, and work, but none of these things ever quenches it. The woman at the well tried to meet the thirst in her heart with men, and then one man came along and radically changed her world. She found out that only He could satisfy her parched soul. She discovered that Jesus is the Living Water.As she walked to the well, her heart hurt. She had to get water at noon, so that the other women in the village would not be there. However, she did not want to have to go when all the other women were gone. She was lonely. She was thirsty for friendship, for someone to reach out to her and accept her. How long had it been since she felt accepted? Had she ever really known what acceptance felt like? Would she ever know what it meant to be loved?
When she got closer to the well, she saw someone sitting on its edge. She breathed a sigh of relief. Well, at least it was a man. They were not as catty or as cold as women were, and she knew how to please them. She slowed down her step, hoping he would go away when he saw her coming, but He did not. She noticed that He was not from Samaria. He was a Jew. Why was He here in Sychar, a city in Samaria?
These might have been the thoughts of the Samaritan woman as she walked toward Jesus one afternoon. After meeting Him, she would finally know what it meant to be accepted and to be loved.
Around
John 4 begins by explaining that Jesus was drawing large numbers of followers, people baptized by His disciples, not just curious onlookers. The Pharisees were starting to get nervous. At first, they thought John the Baptist was going to be the one to challenge their authority, but it was becoming clearer to them that Jesus was actually the rising star.
The Jewish leaders decided to send someone over to try to stir up things between John the Baptist and Jesus. John’s disciples were agitated and they came to John along with a “certain” Jew. They asked John, “What’s up with this guy Jesus. Aren't you bothered that He is baptizing more people than you are?” (See John 3:22-36)
I picture John the Baptist as a hippie type, surfer dude. He might have responded to the leader like this, "No worries dudes. I am down with Jesus. He is righteous. I’m not here to get dudes to follow me. Jesus is going to become epic and I'm canned. That's gnarly. I came to make the way glassy for Him and then I'm out." In other words, “He must increase and I must decrease” (John 3:30).
John’s reply was simple and clearly revealed his deep faith. The Pharisees effort to cause conflict between John and Jesus failed. That said, when Jesus learned about the attention He was drawing among the religious leaders, He decided to go up to Galilee for a while. He left Judea and headed north, toward Samaria.
Most Jews traveled around Samaria. They believed that by going through the Samaritan region they would become unclean. Jews saw Samaritans as half-breeds, not worthy of God's love. The Samaritans had once been part of Israel, but after the Assyrian invasion of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C., they were forced to intermarry with Assyrians, thereby losing their position as Jews.
The gospel writer says that Jesus had to go through Samaria to get to Galilee. Now He did not have to go physically around Samaria. Religious Jews went east, across the Jordan, then north until they passed the Samaritan region, and finally went back west, across the Jordan, to enter Galilee. Jesus chose to go right through Samaria to get to His destination. Jesus did not live by the same standards as the religious. He did not have the same prejudices that the Jewish leaders of the day held. He was concerned about people, and about carrying out the Father’s will. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His One and Only Son that whoever believed in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John. 3:16).
Jesus did not go around Samaria. He knew that the shortest way between two points is a straight line. He also knew that if He went around, He would miss something He needed to do. He would miss the Father’s will.
Thirsty
Jesus arrived in Sychar, a city in Samaria, around lunchtime. He was thirsty and hungry after His six-hour journey. He took a seat by the town well. His throat was parched and covered in dust. He determined to ask a woman carrying a jug for a drink of water. Read the interaction that took place:
When a Samaritan Woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give Me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
The Samaritan woman said to Him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) (John 4:7-9)
Jesus was not concerned with whom she was, what He was concerned about was the state of her heart. He told her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying this to you, ‘Give Me a drink’ you would ask Him and He would give you living water" (Jh 4:13-14).
The woman did not know what to do with Jesus. I can picture her standing there looking at Him wondering if He was all there.
Imagine some guy coming up to you at the gas station, wearing an Armani suit and driving a BMW, asking you to fill up his gas can. You might look at what He is wearing and driving and think to yourself, “Why is He asking me to fill up His gas can?”
He realizes what you are thinking and offers you gas for life. You look at Him like He is crazy and He proceeds to promise you that if you listen to Him he can make sure you are filled up for good, and all the time you are wondering how a guy who cannot pay for his own gas, can promise to give you fuel for the rest of your life.That might have been what the woman at the well was thinking. What kind of water can this man have, if He does not even have a bucket to draw water out of the well right in front of Him.She said, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?” (John 4:11).
She knew that there was something different about Jesus. He had something she wanted, but she could not put her finger on it.
Jesus said, "Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again, but whoever drinks from the water I give him will never get thirsty. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14).
Jesus finally had her full attention. She was thirsty, thirstier than she even knew. The woman finally realized what she was thirsting for all those years. She said, "Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water” (John 4:15).
Go
Look closely at Jesus’ response. He does not give her three easy steps to salvation. Instead, He told her to admit to her own state of need. He instructed her to do something that would reveal the state of her heart, and her willingness to receive the gift He was offering her. Jesus said, “Go call your husband and come back” (16).
The Samaritan woman could have answered Jesus in several ways. She could have reacted in anger, telling Jesus to mind His own business. She could have lied about the men in her life. She could have even taken the cynical route and asked which one, but she chose to be honest with Jesus. She replied, "I have no husband” (17).
Jesus was impressed by her openness, "You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband” (18).
This was the reason that the woman was coming to the well by herself, in the middle of the day. She was a woman of loose morals, one any "God fearing" woman would shun.
Jesus saw her differently. He did not come to call the righteous, but sinners (Matt. 9:13).
Thankfully, that is still true today. The following is the story of a modern day woman at the well:
I can say that I accepted Christ in 1982 at the tender age of 19, but I only believed in Him with my mind. I began attending church and a Bible study with my sister and some friends, but I had to move away from the area shortly after being saved. That's when my trouble began. I settled into my different life in a new city and at the age of 20, I met and married a man who essentially did not believe in God. I fell into the same way of thinking. I was very lonely in my marriage, trying to get a college education and make lots of money. I had an emptiness inside that nothing would fill; not my husband, money, or my career. My husband and I were both proud, selfish, and demanding people, and eventually our marriage ended after seven years. I fell into a very demoralized way of living during the year following my divorce. I began to go out and party with friends, I neglected my responsibilities at home as well as taking care of my dog. My language was foul. I slept with several men thinking that would ease the pain and emptiness I felt inside.
It didn't. Working too much didn’t help either. Looking back, my life felt like it was as filthy as a toilet.Following that year, I was working as an MRI/Nuclear medicine technologist, and I met my current husband. We married in 1993, and moved to Seattle, WA in February 1997, so that my husband could take a job promotion. We had two small children. Jesus literally began this time to pound on the door of my heart.In Seattle, I began working weekends as an MRI technologist in one of the local hospitals. I was often very stressed and tired at those times because of the workload, but I truly enjoyed my job, my coworkers, the doctors, and patients. It was there that Jesus paid me a visit.I remember the day clearly. On Saturday, December 7, 1998, I was scanning a patient for back pain, and as I looked at her, I could tell she was ill in other ways. The whites of her eyes were yellow and her color wasn't good at all. I felt she had hepatitis at the very least. I began to scan her for her back pain. At a point during her exam, the scan protocol called for an injection of a contrast agent into a vein in her arm. I came into the scan room to give her the injection. I was in a great hurry as I injected her. Just as I pulled the needle out of her arm, I stuck myself with her contaminated needle in my left palm, just below the left index finger.I had been a technologist for 15 years and I had never stuck myself with any one's needle before but that is exactly what had just happened! I was so scared and bewildered and, not wanting to add to this patient's considerable level of pain, I did not tell her what had just happened. I finished her exam and she went home without knowing what had occurred.I tried to carry on the rest of the day, thinking that I was a healthy person and that nothing could happen to me because of the needle stick. I went into the bathroom about two hours later, and as I looked into the mirror, I heard my heart's voice saying to me, "You are going to die and leave your kids without a mother."
My future somehow flashed before my eyes and I knew that what this voice was saying was true. Right there, beside a toilet, I fell to my knees and begged God, "God, if You can make this situation alright, if You can heal this woman, then I won't be sick either! Please heal her and me! I know who You are and I know You can do this. I believe in You! I'll be Yours!"I got up from beside the toilet and immediately called my unit manager and the patient, telling them what had happened. A flurry of activity ensued. I went to the ER for therapy, the patient came back, and had her blood drawn for lab work. Things were crazy in the ER but so many miracles happened that evening that it would take too much time to recount them all. One thing's for sure, I saw God mightily working right away for my good.The next day, which was Sunday, I returned to my regular work shift, not knowing what the patient's lab results would show. I went to the computer terminal to check her blood results. Well, God worked two miracles, because first the patient did not have one thing wrong with her blood! In fact, her blood work was better than mine was! Secondly, God cured her, and through her being cured, I was never infected with anything. She was completely free of any problems yet I saw her with my own eyes and knew she was sick!
Well, I really heard Jesus calling me because I had just turned my life over to him the prior day in a radiology bathroom next to a toilet. I had faced my own future and found it lacked eternity! It lacked Jesus Christ!Now, looking back over that time, I cannot thank Jesus enough for all He has done for me, even when I didn't care at all about Him. He showed me my horrible spiritual condition that day, being filthy like that toilet was. But He flushed away that toilet full of all my sin and now, I am free to live as Jesus' friend and disciple. I am deeply grateful to Him for all He has done and is doing in this world. Most of all, I am so very thankful for His presence in my life. I am no longer alone and Jesus gives me the ability to live powerfully for Him. He is with me always!As for me, I am redeemed of the Lord and I will say so! "For God demonstrates His own love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8
Jesus took the woman at the well to the same place he took the woman in this story. He showed them, their “horrible spiritual condition,” revealing their thirst for Him.
The Lord exposed the Samaritan woman’s need. He did this by going to the place she had gone to for years to try to satisfy her thirst. He went to her comforter to get to her heart. He asked her about the men in her life, because He wanted her to understand that nothing she had tried before could make her whole, make her stop thirsting. In this way, Jesus gave her a chance to be real, and through her honesty, the knowledge that she was not righteous, He was able to show her who He was.
Jesus went to the center of her problem. He went to the idol in her life; that thing she thought would save her and never could. She ran to men to try and slake her thirst, but they failed her every time. They just made her thirstier.
How many of us in this room still endeavor at times to refresh our parched soul with people, things, and/or activities? We might even have a relationship with Christ, but still fall back into old patterns or new ones that are just as devastating. Too often, we desire to meet our own needs. Sadly, when we do this, it is like drinking a cup of coffee when we are dehydrated. Our attempt only dries us out more.
I am not immune from this type of spiritual dehydration. Within two years of surrendering my life to Christ, an eating disorder ensnared me. This disorder manifested itself in relationship to the insecurity I was feeling in my marriage. My insecurity was not related to my husband, but to my past. My father left my mother just two years prior to my own marriage. I projected the fear of loss and abandonment onto my own relationship, and felt sure that if I kept my body trim that my husband would not leave me.
The interesting thing about eating disorders is that they might start with a desire for a healthy body, but they quickly move into obsession. Any disorder is more about emotional issues and control than anything else. By controlling my food intake and body image, I believed I could control my husband and my fears of abandonment.
All I really achieved was bondage to those fears. Instead of resting in Christ, I chose to try to manipulate things I thought were under my control to make me feel safe and secure. It was not until I realized I could never make myself truly safe, and allowed Jesus to have control over my life and well being that I finally had the security I was trying to achieve. He was the only one who could satisfy that thirst in my life.
ANYTHING can become our idol. Walking can change from a healthy everyday activity into a compulsive behavior, eating can move from a physical need to a self-comforting tool, Bible study can start out as a time of deep connection with the Lord and move into a guilt ridden activity. God created us for worship. If Christ is not at the center of our worship, then we will worship something or someone else.
The woman at the well chose men, what have you chosen? Is it your husband, your kids, your career? What would Jesus ask you to go and get if you asked Him today to give you living water? What do you need to confess to Him even now, because He is always sitting at the well waiting for you to drink of the water only He can offer?
Sidetrack
Pay attention to how the Samaritan woman dealt with Jesus’ focus on her comforter."Sir, the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem." (John 4:19-24)
She was uncomfortable. Things were getting a little too personal. Just as Jesus was getting to the deep issues of this woman’s life, she tried to change the subject. She tried to divert attention from her use of men to something that was not as close to home.
She tried to sidetrack Jesus from the main issue in order to inquire about a “spiritual” matter. Since she had this man, that was no doubt a prophet standing in front of her, she thought she should ask Him something important.
We are no different in our desire to shift the focus from those sins that are comfortable to us to peripheral issues. I do this. It is easier to have a theological discussion than to confess our sins. It is more comfortable to study the Bible than to allow the Holy Spirit to use it to convict our heart. It appears more “godly” to quote passages of Scripture than to deal with the things that have taken control of our lives.
Jesus did not get sidetracked. He came to satisfy her thirst, not have a debate with her. He told her that the Jews worship God and that salvation is for them, but there would be a time when believers would worship God not in a central location but in spirit and truth. God is spirit and He wants to be worshiped in the spirit. Jesus invited the woman at the well to worship Him in this way.
Jesus invites us to worship Him in exactly that same way today. He wants us to stop trying to sidetrack things, and surrender our wills to His. When we do this, we discover a life overflowing with true worship: “Present yourselves as a living sacrifice wholly acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of service” (Rom. 12:1).
Messiah
Jesus surprised the Samaritan woman. She quickly began to realize that He would satisfy her thirst. When she came to that point, the Lord did something very special for her. He did for her what He did for the woman in the hospital bathroom; He revealed His true nature, His secret identity. When the woman said, “I know that Messiah is coming. When He comes, He will explain everything to us,” Jesus declared, “‘I who speak to you am He’” (John 4:25-26).
Can you imagine what those words did to her heart? Even as I share this with you, my heart is racing. I am the one you have been waiting for, I am the Christ, the chosen One of God.
I am the Messiah
At that moment, the woman received the Living Water. She did not need to debate any longer. Jesus did not have to prove Himself to her. She believed. The evidence for this is found in verse 28: “Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?’”
Drink
Once she grabbed hold of Jesus, she introduced Him to everyone. She did not care if someone was unkind, she was not worried about who might reject her, and she was not concerned about what people would say. The Samaritan woman received the acceptance she had thirsted for all of her life, and she was going to share the water of life with everyone she met. “Many of the Samaritans from the town believed in Him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I ever did’” (39).
After drinking the living water, she was never the same. “Her many sins have been forgiven for she loved much; but he who has been forgiven little loves little,” Jesus said this of another woman, but it applies to the woman at the well. (See Luke 7:48, 50).
If you have ever come across someone freed from the bonds of sin, someone who has been greatly forgiven, you know this woman. You understand what Jesus meant when He said that they loved much.
I had the honor of meeting such a woman several years ago. This woman loved Jesus more than anyone I had ever known. She never stopped talking about Jesus. She never stopped talking about what He did for her.
The story of her salvation freely flowed from her lips. Her sin and her past did not come out as freely. They were things she knew Jesus had already dealt with, and they no longer needed to be remembered, let alone talked about.
When I first met her, she reminded me of a schoolgirl in love for the first time, who wanted everyone to meet the one person the sun and moon circled around. She was never ashamed to say the name of Jesus. She introduced everyone to her best friend.
If anyone rejected Him or His love, she was devastated. She did not hurt for Him, or for herself. She hurt for them, because she knew that their souls were parched and if they just drank the water that liberally surged from Jesus’ heart, they would never be thirsty again. Jesus so saturated her that she could not help pouring out His love on everyone she encountered. Even when rejected, ridiculed or rebuked, she never faltered in her devotion to her Savior. Set free from so much, this woman loved Jesus in ways only she could understand and for reasons only she fully knew.
The woman at the well was just like this woman. She arrived at the point in her life where she realized that Jesus was the only one who saw into her heart, knew all there ever was to know about her, accepted her for who she really was, and still loved her. He loved her the way she longed to be loved.
The Samaritan woman discovered that Jesus was the only one who could satisfy her thirsty soul. He is the only one who can satisfy yours. Jesus is more than enough.
