Jesus: Our Living Water

(upbeat music) - Well, a very good morning to everybody. And let me add my happy mother's day as well today, such a joy to have all the moms and to celebrate you today. I don't get to see my mom. So I'm sure she's watching online. So hey, number one Facebook fan, my mom, this morning. So if you have your Bible, turn to John chapter three. Well, John chapter four, sorry, this morning will be, in just a moment as we're in week five as our journey through the gospel of John together. And if you haven't already done so, there's an outline available in today's message on our app that you can follow along with where we'll be today. Well, Americans are a really thirsty people and you'll be encouraged to know that bottled water is the number one top selling beverage that people purchase. And we drink a lot of bottled water in the United States. In fact, in 2024, we drank 16.4 billion gallons of bottled water and that comes out to an average of about 47 gallons per American. Now, that's not counting tap water. That's just bottled water that we drink. And in addition to plain water or still water, you know, you can get sparkling water these days and you can even have it with varying pH levels to suit your body type. And if you want lemon or lime to flavor your water, that is so 2010, all right?

Well, today we have mango orange and balini bliss and beach plum and guava Sao Paulo and blueberry pomegranate and orange vanilla and even toasted coconut flavored water. You can get them unsweetened or sweetened with artificial sweeteners. And if the flavor is not enough, you can now buy charged waters or waters that are marketed as energy, which just means that they've dumped a bunch of caffeine into that water, which by the way, I do not recommend. 'Cause some of these brands have as much as 160 milligrams of caffeine in one bottle of water. So if you need caffeine in your water, you really have a sleep deprivation problem, all right? And while our La Croix and our spend drifts can be pricey at times, they're really dirt cheap compared to a few other brands, like this one. R-O-I water is sourced from Slovenia and claims to be the most magnesium rich water in the world and it runs about $59 per liter, all right? So that's like two water bottles of water as a liter and 59 bucks, all right? But that's nothing compared to the next one. Spalbardi polar iceberg water is harvested from melting icebergs in the Arctic and it retails for $185 for a liter and that's nothing compared to the next one. Felico jewelry water is a Japanese brand from Kobe, Japan, and we all know Kobe beef, one of the most expensive pieces of meat

you can get in the world, is adorned with Swarovski ski crystals and gold-capped king or queen crowns and it retails for $1,400 per liter. And that's nothing compared to the next one. (audience laughing) Aqua de Cristiano tributo a modigliani. I've practiced that 15 times. The water itself is a blend of waters from France and Fiji and Icelandic glaciers infused with five milligrams of edible 24 karat gold dust. Just three-fourths of a liter retails for $60,000. While the packaging may be exotic, ridiculous, doesn't it, that somebody would spend that kind of money on three-fourths of a liter of water? Now imagine, from God's perspective, how ridiculous it must sound to God, that we keep trying to quench our thirst of our souls with costly things that cannot and will not satisfy. It makes paying $60,000 for a liter of water sound sane compared to some of the things that we do to try to satisfy the longings and the quencings and the thirst of our soul. And money won't be one of those things that satisfy us. Although it's nice to have, money doesn't satisfy or billionaires would be the happiest people on the planet. And guess what? They're not. And substances can't satisfy the longings and desires of our souls. Or addicts would be the happiest people on the planet. And they're not. Fame, being famous, all of our kids want to grow up and be YouTubers. Fame won't satisfy. Otherwise, people in Hollywood would be the happiest people on the planet. And guess what? They're not. Power is also unable to satisfy. Or politicians would be the happiest people on the planet. And we all know that's not the case, right? Unlimited sex won't satisfy or prostitutes would be the happiest people on the planet. And they're not also. In our text today, Jesus is going to make a really, really big claim, a massive claim about himself that Jesus alone can satisfy the thirst of our soul. And while we try to feel cravings, that satisfaction that we're trying to fill with stuff from the world is only temporary. Because you can have a full stomach and still feel empty on the inside

of your soul. Jesus knows this about us. And that's why he came to solve the deepest longings in the inner places. So if you have your texts, join me in John chapter four, verse three. So he, Jesus left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. And now he had to go through Samaria. So just a little geography lesson here, Judea was in the south of ancient Israel and Galilee, where Jesus hometown of Nazareth in the Sea of Galilee is in the northern part. And in the in-between region was where Samaria was located. And the people here in this region are called Samaritans. There's probably another famous Bible story you're familiar with, the parable of the good Samaritan that Jesus tells. Now in the Old Testament, the nation of Israel had a civil war. They split into two kingdoms, a southern kingdom and a northern kingdom. And in 722 BC, the Assyrians, who were up here like modern day Syria, sweep down and they conquer the northern kingdom of Israel. They take the northern people of the kingdom, they exile them, they send their people down here and they intermarry with the folks that were remaining. And the resulting people became known as Samaritans. Full blood of Jews despised Samaritans because they were considered compromised ethnically and religiously. They weren't allowed in the temple in Jerusalem. They were considered to be an unclean people. And while they accepted the first five books of what we know to be the Old Testament, Samaritans rejected the writings of the prophets and the necessity of the temple in Jerusalem. Now we also know they blended the worship of God, Jehovah, with the worship of idols that's in Second Kings. And so while the route through Samaria, if you're going from Jerusalem to Galilee, the route through Samaria was the most direct way. Often Jews would go the long That's how much animosity was between these two people groups. So it's even more amazing here in John chapter four verse five. So he Jesus came to a town in Samaria called psychar near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there and Jesus tired as he was from the journey. Okay. And that's something to be thinking about a Jesus who got tired physically. Set down by the well. It was about noon. And when a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, will you give me a drink? His disciples had gone into town to buy food. So John is setting the scene for us here that it's just her and Jesus. And the Samaritan woman said to him, you're a Jew and I'm a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? And John puts in parenthesis here for Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Like this conversation shouldn't be

happening. And Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asked you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. So John paints the setting for us at one of the most well known sites in this region. Some 1900 years earlier, Jacob had this well duck. By the way, you can still visit this ancient well today. It is now has a Greek Orthodox church built over it. It is in the Palestinian controlled west bank. And while there have been many ancient churches through the centuries that have stood over this well that have been torn down, rebuilt, torn down, rebuilt, the well has always and still is today there. If you have the outline today, I'll put a link to a YouTube video if you want to see some archaeology video that explores this ancient site. Now, in John chapter three, the previous chapter, we saw a Jewish religious leader, Nicodemus, come to Jesus with his questions in the middle of the night. And now the very next chapter, John flips that on its head and has not a religious leader but has somebody at the bottom of the totem pole in culture and society, a Samaritan and a woman comes to Jesus in broad daylight. And they begin to have a conversation which Jesus initiated by the way. Notice that the woman is shocked. He's even speaking to her. And this was not an accident by Jesus. Like he didn't go, "Oh, you're right. I'm sorry. I forgot about that." Jesus here intentionally crosses a religious ethnic and gender barrier and does so with one simple request. Hey, can I get a drink of water? Because she's got a jar that could provide for him. Now, there's a lot of poetic irony here. The one who created water is asking the woman who thirst to give him water. And with disbelief, she's like, "Are you talking to me? Like, here's not supposed to be talking to me." And Jesus responds with a statement that flips the script. Well, if you knew who it was that was asking you for water, you'd be asking me. And in the woman's mind, she heard this phrase living water in a very specific way. I think of living water as moving water or maybe even more specifically as spring water, water that's kind of bubbling up out of the ground. Of course, they're standing at a well, which is one way to obtain water, but well water is stagnant water. And we all know like from history, like wells can become poisoned with diseases. Typhoid is often contaminated well water. An animal could have fallen in and died in the well. And like all of that would have been ruined. So protecting a source of water like that would have been extremely serious. But moving water, living water, spring water, offered something better. Because it would have been cleaner. It would have been cooler and more where can we get it? I mean, we're out here in a desert region. Where is it? Tell me about

it. And so, John often records Jesus' words in ways that we know Jesus is talking on one level and the people that are hearing Jesus are understanding it on a different level, right? Jesus isn't speaking about physical water. Jesus is describing an inner renewal from a spring in the spirit that never runs dry. Now, we'll learn in a few weeks in John chapter 7 that what Jesus refers to here when he says living water, he's actually speaking about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in us. More to come on that in a few weeks. But she's thinking about just the daily need. I'm thirsty. I got to go home and cook for these folks. And I need this water. But Jesus is offering her something so much better. He's offering her permanent inner transformation and renewal in her spirit. And so, the conversation continues. Verse 11, "Sir," the woman said, "You have nothing to draw with, and this well is deep." In fact, it is. If you go there today, Jacob's well is 151 feet deep. "Well, where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our Father Jacob who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?" Now, notice the irony of the statement here, the irony of the question, "Are you greater?" We know from reading, "Of course he's greater." But she doesn't know that in the moment. And Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water, you'll get thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water, I give them will never thirst." Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. And the woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw this water." Of course, she wanted this water. I spend a lot of time in countries where people manually go and pump water from into buckets from the well. It's an exhausting thing, by the way. I've had a chance to pump water out of the ground by hand. You and I are so blessed to turn on a faucet. But in addition, these women would also carry these heavy clay jars on their head. And they weigh enough by themselves. But then you add the weight of the water. And today, I know, especially in Africa, where I travel a lot, women have all kinds of neck and back problems as a result of that. Of course, she wants this water. Why would I want to keep coming here and drawing water from this well? It's an incredible amount of work for most women multiple times a day. In fact, here's a picture taken in the early 1900s at Jacob's Well. And you'll notice here the stone jar beside this woman that would have been using that just a little more than a century ago. Now, notice that both her and Nicodemus in the previous chapter have questions of Jesus that they're struggling to understand. They're struggling to comprehend his words. Like, what in the world are you talking about? Both the religious expert and the woman that had

religious confusion in her life. And Jesus doesn't answer her question with a simple yes or no. He answers with a statement about himself and says, I have actually something to offer you that satisfies a deeper need in your life than physical thirst. I have the ability to provide eternal life. And of course, if he has a never ending supply of this, well, then she's going to ask for it. And Jesus then responds with a request, verse 16. He told her, hey, go call your husband and come back. And she says, I don't have a husband. And Jesus and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true. Now first, I just want to celebrate the woman's honesty. She doesn't lie. She could have in that moment said, sure thing, I'll be right back, you know, and then not come back. She doesn't play games with Jesus. She actually speaks with great courage about her reality. And you know, I think that's there's a lesson to be learned there that real healing in our lives begins when we can just be honest with God about where we're at. He already knows her full story. He knows her past. He knows where she's been. And Jesus chose to start the conversation anyways. He specifically, I think, went through some area to have this meeting with this woman. She had a divine appointment that she didn't know about was on her calendar, but Jesus knew that Jesus sought her out. And he, by the way, knows your story too. And maybe the question for us today is could can I equally be as honest with Jesus as she was? Can you be honest with Jesus if when he speaks to you that you can acknowledge the place that you're coming from, your past experiences? Or are we tempted to play pretend about our realities? Don't ever believe the lie. If God really knew me, he would reject me. He wouldn't want me or he wouldn't love me. He already knew her story and stopped at this well to purposefully engage her. And your story does not prevent him from engaging you as well. But is actually the very reason he came. Now, one way we could read this passage is to maybe think that Jesus is shaming her or embarrassing her. Now, I don't think that's what Jesus is doing at all. Number one, that's not consistent with his character that we read in the rest of the Gospels. In this day, marriage was a way of belonging and protection. So, I think the point that Jesus is making here is more that she was vulnerable. I don't think in the statement Jesus made that he was there to condemn her, but he's actually revealing himself in a very personal way to her. God sees her story. God sees what she's been through. Now, before we move on through the text, let's be super careful about jumping to conclusions about her past.

Because it's too easy to read that statement and assume that she is some sort of unusually broken person, as if her previous marriages make her less than human. Neither Jesus nor John allude to that in the text. First of all, we don't know her previous husbands could have been any combination of passing away of illness. Maybe they died in war. Maybe she was abandoned. And certainly, we know that women in the first century had very limited voices in divorce proceedings. So, regardless of how her circumstances came about, what I want us to do this morning is empathize. However, that story happened, the enormous pain and longing that this woman would have felt. Her longing's first ability, for love, for care, and for provision. Jesus is in effect saying to her, "You are deeply thirsty, and God sees your need." Now, some people have made a lot of the fact that she comes to draw water at noon, perhaps noting that she was socially isolated, perhaps even promiscuous. And I don't know if that's helpful to the story or not. I think rather than trying to dig into her life for judgment, what if we swapped our story for her story? I mean, what might Jesus have pointed out in your life? I'd rather not do that. Remember that in the previous story, Jesus told the most religious person, who's a member of the Sanhedrin, that his religiosity was not enough. So it doesn't matter how her story came into being, she also is not enough. John is contrasting those very intentionally here. I think he's using the discussion about her past to connect with the inner longings in her spirit, not to shame or guilt her. Jesus does not need any additional information to expose her, but to let her know that this living water he speaks of reaches into the inner depths of her soul. Because grace is not repelled by our broken areas, but it instead redeems them. That's the whole point of why Jesus came, it's his grace. And the conversation continues. And if you think this is a lot of text, by the way, the reason it is is because the longest recorded conversation that any one person has with Jesus in all four gospels is this conversation. Verse 19, "Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you're a prophet."

Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, so she's referring to Mount Gary Zim that is in Samaria. But you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem. Jesus replied, "Believe me, a time is coming. When you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, you Samaritans worship what you do not know, we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is Spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth." And the woman said, "Well, I know that the Messiah, called Christ, is coming, and when He comes, He will explain everything to us." And Jesus declared, "Hey, it's me." In English here, that's translated, "I am He," in the original Greek language, it's just, "I am." It might look on the surface like this woman had changed the subject. We're talking about her past, and all of a sudden, maybe it looks like, "Let's talk about worship matters here, let's move on." But in actuality, she's not really changing the subject. She recognizes someone holy is in front of her. And she raises the central theological divide between Jews and Samaritans. For centuries, these two people groups had competing priesthoods, competing claims, competing temples, and competing identities. She's smart enough to know the Messiah will solve the dispute. But while she has this holy guy in front of her, "Hey, what are your thoughts about this?" And Jesus takes this moment to reveal His identity, that His identity and His personhood is actually way bigger, way more important than this religious squabbling that these two groups of people have going on. The true worship is not any longer going to focus on a location but on a person. And who's that person, the person that was standing right in front of her? And I imagine in that moment, her mouth kind of falls open in amazement.

Now the disciples, they come back from their shopping trip, and they find Jesus talking with, carrying on a conversation with a Samaritan woman, and they're probably like, "What in the world is He doing?" like they're amazed. And Jesus and her continue their... the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 'Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did.' Could this be the Messiah? And they came out of the town and made their way towards Him." Verse 39, "Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of the woman's testimony." Now for us in our day and age, a woman's word is not considered any less than a man's word, but in this day and age, it was considered less valid than a man's. John is making a point here and she says, "He told me everything I ever did." So when the Samaritans came to Him, they urged Him to stay with them and He stayed two days. And because of His words, many more became believers. And they said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said. We have now heard for ourselves and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world." I think this abandoned water jar is a powerful symbol. That the thing that she came to the well for became secondary after her encounter with Jesus, the thing that she thought was most important, actually she could lay that aside when she realized who she was standing in front of. It wasn't that she didn't need physical water. I mean, she's eventually going to need some. She's going to need to drink. She's going to need to cook. But in light of this encounter, all of that melts away. And by the way, she's not the only one. Peter left his nets. Matthew left his tax collector booth. Mary leaves the kitchen to sit at the feet of Jesus. How about your priorities? What are the secondary things in your life that you've put in front of the deeper inner things that you ought to be paying attention to that Jesus is saying, "Come on, Wes, you're chasing after this and this. You're trying to fill your life. You're trying to give your life purpose and meaning using these secondary little things in your life, but I've got something for you that's way better than that." I love the picture that she leaves one vessel behind and she herself is now the vessel for God to fill. And because of this encounter, she races back to town to tell everybody about this conversation. You got to come here this guy. And she doesn't have any credentials. She doesn't have any training. And she doesn't even really have a full understanding of who Jesus is. And God uses her anyway to influence an entire town. I love the progression of how faith is built in her and encounter with Jesus,

which begins to develop into belief. That belief experiences transformation. There's a realization. And then she becomes a witness. And there's a lot to learn from that pattern. In fact, that's probably how many of us also come to faith in Christ. And I wonder if he can use her story, can he use your story? I think the answer is yes. He can. Do you feel qualified? Probably not. Do you feel like you've had all the training and understanding and knowledge that you'd like to have? Probably not. Is your past squeaky clean? Nope. And yet she becomes one of the greatest evangelists in a Samaritan town in an area where people should not have believed in this Jewish man, she becomes proof A. And I believe if God can do that in her life, he can do it in your life and in my life, that he can use us to be a testimony of lesser important things that won't satisfy, stop trying to drink the $60,000 bottle of water to fill your thirst that only Jesus can fill. If you're with me church this morning, say amen. Let's stand our feet. Or thank you that you are the well of living water that never runs dry. Thank you Lord, that you are the one who fills us when we are empty, when we are thirsty, when our souls are longing for something more, Father, that you are the one, the only one that can fill us. And Lord, I pray today for those of us in the room who may be chasing after lesser things to satisfy the deepest longings of our soul. Lord, when we've been deceived, that money or stuff, a title, a career, a person that's not you Jesus is going to fulfill us or complete us. Lord, may we repent of that today Father, and may today we realize with new eyes and new heart and new longing that it is only in Jesus that we can experience that. So we pray, Holy Spirit, God that you would come and be that living water, the spring inside of us that bubbles over, that we don't just have a personal encounter with you, but because of our encounter, those around us, our neighbors, our coworkers, our family, seize the living water in us. And it's in the mighty name of Jesus that we pray together. Amen.