Living Water for the Thirsty

You know, Johnny, I love what you led with about worship. Of course, it includes what we just did when we all sang songs to God. But as Romans 12:1 and 2, what Johnny was quoting and referencing earlier, worship is far more than just what just happens musically. Worship is also what you do tomorrow morning when you wake up and you have to have something in order to have a good day. Worship is what you do whenever you’re driving to work and you have to let somebody know how you feel about them cutting you off. Speaking of Diane, worship is everything that we do in life. And we’re either worshiping Jesus Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords, who is the satisfier of our souls, or we are worshiping something else that we’re looking to to replace Him. And by God’s grace, He in His infinite kindness makes a way for us to exchange the little idols of our life, the control, the power, the substances, shopping, approval, whatever it is. And He makes a way by God’s, by His own grace, through the sacrifice of Jesus and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit for us to stop worshiping the dead idols and to worship God with all of life, including what we just did musically. So may y’all sound great.

This month, we are praying for our kids’ ministry, Sauldam Kids. You may have noticed that over the past month or so, we’ve been announcing this need for more and more volunteers within the kids’ ministry. You know, also by God’s grace, He has given us an overabundance of children. But we also know that God will not give us more children, i.e. more families, until we follow His lead in taking care of the ones that we already have. And right now, what we need desperately is we need another handful of folks to commit to serving in our kids’ ministry. Specifically, we’re looking for two more people to serve in our nursery on Wednesday nights, which we just kicked back off a couple weeks ago. And we need about six to serve on Sunday mornings between Sunday school and the worship service hour. I believe Kim is looking for a once-a-month commitment on Sunday mornings. Is that correct, Kim? Yes, okay. So, a once-a-month commitment on Sunday mornings, and I’m not exactly sure about the Wednesday nights. But what we’re going to do for the next few moments is we’re going to pray for this ministry, and we’re going to pray that God would lay it on the hearts of the right people to serve in this ministry.

Now, I’ll tell you, what Kim is not looking for is eight people who have a Ph.D. in Bible who are ready to explain the hypostatic union in all of its glories to a two-year-old. That’s not what she’s looking for. What she’s looking for are devoted followers of Jesus who are going to love on today’s youngest disciples. You know, as a parent of a six, four, two, and newborn, I can firmly attest to the worth and the greatness of this Sauldam Kids ministry. As my kids come home and they’re talking about what they’re learning, how they’re being loved on, how they love coming to this place because of the people that serve in those rooms. So you may not feel like you’ve got all the equipment necessary, and that’s okay. All that you need to have is a readiness and a willingness to be used by the Lord. Because I will tell you, Al will tell you, Clarence will tell you, anybody who’s done anything worthwhile for the Lord will tell you, God does not need you to get your acts together in order for Him to use you. What He needs, if you could say it that way, is He needs us to be willing. So we’re just looking for some folks that have the right heart, that are willing, and we trust that God will take care of all the equipping.

So buddy up with the neighbor if you feel so inclined, or just bow your head by yourself if you want to pray by yourself, and just spend a few moments praying for the Sauldam Kids ministry.

Holy Spirit, good morning. Thank You for this time that we have. Thank You for gathering us today, for keeping and holding us another week. God, thank You for this abundance of kids and life that You’ve given to Sauldam Baptist Church. Lord, thank You for all these little ones that we get to love on, that we get to steward and cherish, that we get to disciple and raise up. Lord, thank You. As a young dad, I love Personally getting to benefit from the kids’ ministry, and hearing my kids come home and talking about not just learning Bible stories—there’s worth in that—but for them to grow in their love for Jesus. Lord, I’m so thankful. And I know too, Father, that those who serve in the kids’ ministry, God, serving as a discipline, as a way of worship, is also a way for the volunteers to grow in their love for You too. Lord, thank You. Thank You for this symbiotic opportunity that we have as servants and receivers alike, both get to grow in their love for You in this kids’ ministry. Lord, God, as You’ve given our church this abundance of kids, we trust that You will also give us the abundance of volunteers necessary to disciple and care for them. God, I pray that You would lay it on the hearts of the members here at Sauldam Baptist Church. Lord, for anybody that’s resisting this, I pray that You would break through that. For anybody who thinks that they are too small to be of service, I pray that You would inspire them. For anybody, Lord, who is curious about what it looks like to invest in this population of our church, Lord, I pray that You would fill that in. Lord, that You would help Kim and her team so that they continue to love on our youngest missionaries, but also our youngest mission field here at Sauldam Baptist Church.

Holy Spirit, I want to pray as well and invite You into this next few moments, asking that You would get a hold of this message. You would help me to say what You want me to say and nothing more or nothing less. Holy Spirit, for the person in the room this morning who is yet to have living water poured into their soul, like Jesus is going to tell this woman, please get a hold of them this morning. You pour Your living water on the dry ground of the souls of the lost here in this room. So if anybody came in here spiritually dead, they would walk out of here spiritually alive. And for the rest of us who came in knowing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior with a love relationship with Him, we still come in drinking from the broken cisterns of this world. Would You use the next few minutes to convict us and help expose the things that we trust in instead of You? And would You pour more of Your living water inside of us too? That our lives would be like a garden bearing fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness, and the rest. God, we love You and it’s in Your great name that we pray. Amen.

Well, go ahead and turn in your copy of God’s Word to John chapter 4, the Gospel of John chapter 4. We’re going to be looking at verses 1 through 26. As you get there, I just want to commend to you one more time the Celebrate Recovery ministry. Man, I cannot overstate my sincere joy and appreciation over Robbie and how God has provided you to our church, man. You know, we were praying for some way that we can help do some good in our community, not just for the sake of doing good things, but do it in the name of Jesus Christ to help people come from areas of brokenness and bondage into a place of freedom and joy in life. We’ve been praying for that, myself, Al, the deacons. This was years ago. We have prayed for about a year. Every month we’re getting together. We’re talking about it. We’re praying about it, wondering, all right, what is God going to do? And then God provides Robbie and Robbie starts this ministry for us. And man, it’s been awesome to see how the Lord’s already using You and already using Celebrate Recovery to make a difference and to make a dent for God’s kingdom in this community.

I just want to reiterate what Matt said and what Robbie has said. Like, man, maybe substance chemical addiction is not your thing, but online shopping is. Man, maybe for you, it’s not this outward extreme of something that’s holding you down and everybody can see the marks of it on your life, but man, maybe you are just a slave to being in control. Anxiety has riddled your life. You can’t stop gossiping. You’re always afraid. Man, Celebrate Recovery is meant to help people from over 40 different hurts, habits, and hangups find freedom and joy in Christ. And I commend that to you every Sunday evening at six o’clock. Man, I view Celebrate Recovery as just one of these ways that we See God’s awareness of our limitations and struggles. Hebrews chapter 4 verses 14 through 16 says that we do not serve a high priest who is unable to empathize with our need, but one who has been tempted and tried in every way yet without sin.

You know, for us, Celebrate Recovery is one of these ways where we get to approach the community and we get to approach you and we get to say, hey, we recognize life in this fallen world is difficult. God sees that. Yet, you don’t have to stay where you are. You can have a better future tomorrow.

You know, Jesus recognized that in His ministry. And this morning, we will see Jesus’ heart on full display as He engages someone who is caught in the mires and the depths of her own brokenness, yearning for love and a soul level satisfaction. And we will see Jesus begin to love her out of that darkness and that brokenness into a place of healing and joy.

John chapter 4 verses 1 through 26.

Let me set the context for you. If you haven’t been with us over the last month, this is kind of how we got to this morning. In John chapter 2, Jesus does His first miracle recorded in the Gospel of John where He shows up at a wedding in Cana who has run out of wine. Jesus points to the purification jars, these huge cisterns, these stone cisterns that they would have filled with water and used for ritual purification to remain ceremonially clean during this wedding. Jesus points to those, says, hey, go fill those things up with water. And then He turns that purification water into wine, revealing Himself in a mysterious hidden sort of a way to be a wonder working teacher at worst. At best, He’s God in the flesh.

After making the wine out of water at this wedding, He goes to the temple in Jerusalem where He finds, remember, all the money changers and finds all the animals in the temple, everybody making this commerce, making all this commotion. And He flips over the tables of all the coins. He drives out all the animals and says, stop making My Father’s house a house of commerce. This huge, man, climactic confrontation with the religious establishment.

And it goes from that to this hidden conversation at night between Him and one of those religious leaders, a guy named Nicodemus, remember? Where Nicodemus comes to Him and says, hey, we of the Jewish leaders, we recognize God’s gotta be with You. How else could You be doing all these signs? And Jesus doesn’t care so much about His notoriety. Instead, He cares about Nicodemus’ soul. And instead of even responding to that, He goes, hey, Nicodemus, if you want to be inside of God’s kingdom, if you want to enter the kingdom of God, you’ve got to be born of water and of the Spirit. Nicodemus is like, what? And they go down this theological conversation about what it means to be born again.

And then after all of this, Jesus is with His disciples. They’re at the river and they’re making more disciples. His disciples are baptizing other people into the name of Jesus. And it creates this dispute between one of John the Baptist’s disciples and some other random guy about who is the greatest. And John the Baptist makes that ultimate declaration. He must increase. I must decrease.

So you have these themes over the past four weeks we’ve looked at of God using water to do something. These bold confrontations and this explanation of why Jesus came, who He is. This morning, as we look at this scene out of John chapter four, we’ll see these three themes all come back together in this conversation Jesus has with this woman.

Look at it with me. I’m going to unpack a few details as we go along. For the extremely theological of the room, me and Matt, we will uncover everything you want. All right. But for everybody else in the room, I’m giving you a little something to chew on. And then Matt, you, me and Jeff, we can, we can talk over fajitas some other time and talk more about this stuff. Okay. Cool. All right. Rick, we’re having lunch Friday, but there we go. Anybody that’s 55 and older can come and have lunch with me and Rick on Friday. Okay.

When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard He was making and baptizing more disciples than John, though Jesus Himself wasn’t baptizing, but His disciples were, He left Judea and went again to Galilee. He had to travel through Samaria. So He came to a town of Samaria called Sychar.

Near the property that Jacob had given his son, Joseph. Let’s park the bus right there. Jesus is in the southern portion of what we today would call Israel. Well, at that time they would have called Judah. All right. He’s in the southern portion because remember He had just cleansed the temple in Jerusalem. He’s making and baptizing disciples at the river. That’s where He’s doing this. He wants to get up north to a place called Galilee. What they would have called Israel today, we just call that Northern Israel. It’s Israel in the north, Judah in the south. Israel, the country of what we call Israel today, just imagine a shoe box standing up tall. It’s just this rectangle with skinny sides pointing up. So Jesus wants to get from south to north to pass or to get up there. He had two routes. He could go around this kind of bad part of town, if you want to call it that, skirt up the river and come back over the top, or He could go through Samaria. Samaria is what He had to go through for the fastest possible route from Judah in the south to Israel in the north. So in one sense, to get from south to north, He’s got to pass through the Midlands. But Jesus had to do this because He had something else on His mind, not just topography.

Verse 6, Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, worn out from His journey, sits down at the well. It was about noon. A woman of Samaria came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” In fact, I am thirsty too. I think sometimes we look at the Gospels and we look at Jesus and we want to, out of a right reverence for His holiness and His divinity, we want to so magnify the fact that Jesus is God that we forget that God dwelt with us. Jesus is God in the flesh. How theologians refer to this is called the hypostatic union. Simply put, Rick, all this means is that Jesus was 100% God and 100% man at the same time always. That’s all it means. Simple enough, right? Yeah? Okay. All right. Jesus, divine and infinite, enfleshed in the body and the experience of a man. So Jesus, in a moment, is going to flex the fact that He is divine when He is going to know everything about this woman without her having to tell Him anything. Yet, He reveals that He is human because as He is walking these hundreds of miles, He gets tired. He sits down and He needs a drink of water. But look at who He asks for a drink. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. “Give me a drink,” Jesus said to her, because His disciples had gone into town to buy food.

Her reply, verse 9, “What? How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” Jews don’t associate with Samaritans. Remember I was telling you that Jesus is going from south to north from a place called Judah back then to a place called Israel back then? You see, it’s not just that they had some sort of Mason-Dixon line that artificially separated south from north for them. What they had was owing back or going back hundreds of years. You see, when God brought the people that we call Israel into what we call the Promised Land, God intended to be a king over them to rule them in this place so that they would be a light to the nations, that they would bear His image, and in so doing bring more and more people into God’s family. That’s what we call Israel. Yet the people of Israel eventually reject God as their king, and they say, give us a king, give us a king. So God gives them Saul, then Saul ends, gives them David. David has a son named Solomon. Solomon’s got a couple of sons. They’re both knuckleheads. One rules the south, one rules the north. They can’t figure out who’s the big guy in charge, and God uses their failed leadership and the sins of Israel to utterly break the spirit of the arrogant Israelites. He does this by bringing the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Persians to come grab up God’s people, destroy all their stuff, and take them out of the land to repopulate their own forces. Whenever the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians were taking all the Israelites out of the land, they were bringing other people into the land. All right, we tracking with me? Later after that, God recognizes and listens to the repentance of His people.

Under the leadership of guys like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, so forth, and He brings His scattered Israelites back into the land that we call Israel. They mostly got resettled in the north. So what you have going on in the south, in Judah, you’ve still got the temple there. That would have been the hotbed of Jewish faith and religion, and that also would have been the place where all the purest blood Israelites lived. But up in the north, man, that’s where all these Israelites who had intermarried with the nations, that’s where they resettled. Up in the north, that’s where all these foreigners were deposited by these other kingdoms. Up in the north, that’s where their Jewishness gets diluted by worldliness.

So this woman, she’s a Samaritan, she’s a product of that. She would have been from the wrong side of town. She would have been the type of person that you wouldn’t associate with. She would have been the type of person that a Jewish male rabbi who’s trying to build a credible following by no means would have been seen alone with. “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink of water from me, a Samaritan? If you knew the gift of God, if you knew the gift of God, if you knew the gift of God, if you knew who was saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask Him and He would give you living water.”

We don’t have a name for this lady. Her name’s not recorded, but I want to personalize this a little bit. Someone give me a female name. Give me a lady’s name. Ellie. Sir, Ellie said, you don’t have a bucket. This well is deep. Where do you get this living water? You’re not greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did His sons and His livestock.

Jesus says, Ellie, everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, Ellie, listen to this. The water I will give him will become a well of water springing up inside of him for eternal life. Sir, Ellie says, give me this water so I’ll never be thirsty and have to come here to draw water.

Jesus, in this conversation with Ellie, is offering this lady something that she’s been yearning for for years. And we’ll see that in a second. He makes this offer of living water. It’s a double meaning, double entendre. On its surface, what Jesus is saying is, hey, this well has to be repopulated by the rain and by these, you know, undersurface rivers. And that’s how you keep drawing the water out. If you take too much out of it at once, the well empties and it dries up. You got to let it refill. But I’ve got living water for you.

They would have used living water to refer to a natural spring kind of geysering out of the ground. I don’t know if you know this about the land of Israel, what we call the like the country, the topography of Israel outside of the rainy season and away from the rivers. The land of Israel is actually really dry and rocky and pretty craggy. So if you were to stumble upon a spring of water, that meant everything. That meant that you don’t have to walk miles to go get your water, which is what she’s doing. The best guess we know she’s walked at least one mile, one way to go draw this water. Best guess. You don’t have to walk miles to get your water. You can just, you imagine having a herd of animals that is your, is like all of your family’s wealth is wrapped up in these five cattle and these 10 goats. And instead of having to walk them miles and miles for pasture, man, it’s just right there in your backyard. Having a spring of living water would have changed everything.

But Jesus is saying, hey, the living water that I had to give will well up inside of you. Because Jesus is referencing these promises of the Old Testament, where God looks at His people Israel when they’ve been deported from the land. Do you remember what I was telling you earlier? God’s people had sinned. These foreign nations are coming in. They’re grabbing the Israelites, taking them off because they have left God. God says, one day I will come back to you and I will pour my water into your spirit. I will make you come alive and I will return. God says, I will return.

you to the land that you were taken from. Jesus might as well have had a bullhorn shouting, “I’m Him. I’ve got the water for you. The promises, they’re all about me.” Instead, verse 16, “Go, call your husband, then come back.” “The husband,” she answers, “I don’t have a husband.” “That’s correct. You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband.’ For you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you’ve said is true.” “Sir,” the woman replied, feeling embarrassed, feeling ashamed, feeling something, turns the conversation. “I see that you’re a prophet.” Man, we do that, don’t we? Somebody calls us on our stuff, and we want to take it to a theological, churchy conversation, right? We try to hide behind all the things that we know about the Bible. “Sir, I see you’re a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews say that this place to worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus told her, “Believe me, woman, an hour 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 because salvation is from the Jews.” Verse 23, “An hour is coming and is now here when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.” The woman says to Jesus, “I know the Messiah is coming, who is called Christ. When He comes, He will explain everything to us.” Jesus says, “I, the one speaking to you, am He.” Imagine it, Donna. Man, imagine it. Being at this well, it’s noon. You’ve come alone because you’ve been ostracized by your community. Yearning for the day when you could be accepted by somebody, and you’ve given up on the idea of marriage altogether. You’re just happy to shack up with whoever will house you. Wanting so much more than this world could ever give. Yearning for forgiveness and for love and a warm embrace. Holding on to this hope that maybe one day this Messiah might come, and He’s looking at you. Your hopes, I’m Him. You’re waiting, I’m Him. You’ve been looking for. What’s Jesus’ main point? Only living water gives real life. In fact, will you just say that to yourself? “Only living water gives real life.” It’d be easy to look at this lady and to write her off, to view her according to the flesh, as we were talking about this morning at Sunday school. Man, I look at this lady with her five husbands, with her affairs, living with this dude she’s not married to, and what I see is a sign of a deeper issue, a symptom of a deeper disease. See, this woman, she is thirsty for love, meaning, and acceptance, looking for something that only God can give her. When I’m being honest with myself, I have to ask, what do I drink instead of Jesus? Where do I go to for meaning, love, and acceptance other than to the arms of my Savior? Man, I think about how I want to be an awesome dad, and I want to cultivate the image for you guys of me publicly as a guy that can manage my house really well. Man, when I think about what gives me meaning, I sometimes drift into this materialism where I want to have all this stuff, and man, I just, I’m getting on Amazon, how can I buy these things that I think will satisfy me or make me look a certain way? Man, sometimes when I want life, I mean, I’m tempted to escape the real life that I actually have, and I want to run to social media. Some of us, man, we run to drugs or to substances. Man, what do you drink instead of Jesus to get life? Man, for you, is it, is it your career? Is it money? Is it trying to accumulate more and more and make more and more? Because you think more and more will satisfy, but for some reason, more and more is actually never quite enough. Man, for some of us, we drink the, the, we drink from the well of health and of fitness and good doctor’s visits, because we think if a guy in a white coat can just tell us we are cured, then that would solve everything for us. Man, some of us, we, we even look to religion or to good morals, because we think, man, if I could just give enough money, if I could just avoid enough bad stuff, if I could just be a good enough person, then maybe God will love me. Maybe I’ll have some sort of acceptance. We’re like Nicodemus, hiding in all of our good works and religion, or we become like this woman, brazenly lost and caught and trapped in this lifestyle of sin.

Man, here’s the truth, friend. God has hardwired eternity into your soul, and until you find satisfaction in Jesus, you will try to find it in everything else. Life for the lost, for someone who’s yet to give their life to Jesus, is just one episode of soul searching after another, looking for the thing that just might be the fix this time.

And what’s worse, Diane, I’ve been following Jesus for 18 years, and I still do it. Wretched man that I am, who can escape from this body of flesh? Man, I’ve seen Jesus be so good and so satisfying time and time again, and I’m still so deeply tempted to run to the broken wells of this world, Paula. I bow down to the idol of my marriage. I bow down to the idol of church growth. Man, I bow down to the idol of you guys liking me, and I take a sip from that well, and I find it to be salt water. Man, leaving me thirstier every time.

Start wrapping it up. Man, I love this woman. Man, this woman recognized that she needs a savior. She’s in touch with her spiritual dirtiness, and she recognized, too, that her soul was so deeply thirsty. It wasn’t written yet, but she would have said a hearty amen to the Apostle Paul when Paul said in Romans 3:23 that the wages of sin is death, but get it, the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.

She would have said, amen, Paul. I’ve seen it to be true. Man, the wages of my sin is death. The Messiah told me so, but the free gift of God is eternal life in the one who promised me a new future at Jacob’s well that day.

Man, have you been to Jacob’s well yet? Let me ask it this way. Have you given your life to Jesus Christ yet? Man, I fear and I just I feel it in my bones. I mean that we have people in our family, our church family, and man, you come and you do this this church thing, and Jesus is here, and He’s like, “What are you doing? Are you trying to make Me happy through putting money in the plate? Do you think you can you can pay Me off this way? Man, what are you doing? You’re singing these songs that you don’t you don’t mean the words. You mumble your way through, turn your eyes upon Jesus, but you’ve never once seen the things of this world grow strangely dim because I am not beautiful to you. Man, what are you doing? Doing all the church stuff, getting baptized, and taking Lord’s Supper, but never once having actually trusted in Me for eternal life. What are you doing?

I ask it again. If you’ve been to Jacob’s well, you’ve said, “You know what? I’m done trusting in this world. You know what? Done trusting in religion. You know what? I’m done thinking that anything other than God will satisfy me.”

Bow your heads, please, and close your eyes. I want to give you a moment to really answer that question with the Holy Spirit. I want you to ask the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, please speak to me. Do I have eternal life? Holy Spirit, please speak to me. Have I given my life to Jesus? Holy Spirit, please speak to me. What am I drinking from you? Satisfy my soul that isn’t you.” Everybody take a moment and just ask the Holy Spirit to speak.

I want to demystify some of this about the Holy Spirit speaking. Some of us say that we’ve never heard God speak before. If you prayed that prayer with sincerity, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal something, if something popped in your mind, then we’re going to trust the Holy Spirit just spoke to you. You may be surprised, offended, scared, frustrated, but if you trust the Holy Spirit just spoke, you’ll also find a sure peace and relief. Relief. I invite you if something popped in your mind, you would just say, Holy Spirit, thank you for speaking.

The next step of repentance is apologizing. Jesus, I’m sorry for trusting in this instead of you. After apologizing, you would ask God to help you turn. Say, Jesus, help me to give up what the Holy Spirit said and help me to live with and for you instead. For anybody in the room, believe that you’ve never actually given your life to Jesus Christ before. You’ve never once tasted the sweet water of eternal life that Jesus wants to pour into your soul. Man, these words aren’t magic. If you pray them in your own soul with intention to God, then He will answer them.

You say, God, I believe that You sent Your Son, Jesus Christ, to live in my place and to die in my place. I believe these things. I admit that I am a sinner who has fallen short of Your standard and I’ve drank from the broken wells of this world to satisfy me. I admit that, God. I admit that You are the only satisfying water and I want You, God. God, make my heart come alive. Pour Your water into my soul. I confess You as Lord, Jesus. I confess You as Lord, as Savior, as rescuer, as master. I confess that You are number one for me now, Jesus.

Jesus, thank You for giving Your life for us, satisfying our deepest needs, but even more than that, fully satisfying the wrath of God for our sin. Let us walk out of here and live as people who are satisfied with joy, who have had an immense, impossible debt paid for us. Let us be ambassadors of Your kingdom as new creations. Lord, we love You. Thank You for loving us. It’s in Your great name we pray. Amen.