Living Water
Download MP3Invite you to open your Bibles to John chapter 4. John 4. After last week in destroying my voice I went to the dock and they said I had vocal nodules that have gone and ruptured. So I'm supposed to be completely silent for about 3 weeks. Which is hard to do when you're a pastor.
Jeffrey Heine:So I'll be, I'll be completely silent after this, at least for the next 2 weeks, except for preaching on Sunday. And how can he not sing? I mean how are you supposed to not sing that last song? So, maybe I'll be stretching out this sickness for 3 or 4 weeks if I keep singing. But, so if afterwards I'm rude to you or something, I'm not talking, it's not because I don't want to.
Jeffrey Heine:I just can't talk. Turn to John 4 and we'll begin reading in verse 1. Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples. He left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria.
Jeffrey Heine:So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, wearied as He was from His journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the 6th hour. There came a woman of Samaria to draw water.
Jeffrey Heine:And Jesus said to her, give me a drink. For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. 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.
Jeffrey Heine: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? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock. Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again.
Jeffrey Heine:But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water. Jesus said to her, go call your husband and come here. The woman answered him, I have no husband.
Jeffrey Heine:And Jesus said to her, you are right in saying I have no husband, for you have had 5 husbands, and that one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true. The woman said to him, sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. And Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
Jeffrey Heine:You worship what you do not know, We worship what we know. For salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and now is here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to Him, I know that the Messiah is coming.
Jeffrey Heine:He was called Christ. When He comes, He will tell us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. Pray with me. Our father, we ask that through your spirit, you would speak to us.
Jeffrey Heine:You would tear down what needs to be torn down, and you would build up what needs to be built up. But father, you would have your way with us. I ask that the words we just read through your spirit would come alive, and they would both wreak havoc and bring life in our hearts and minds. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us.
Jeffrey Heine:And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. There is a lot in this text, so much so that we're gonna take the next 2 or 3 weeks to look through it. So don't panic if 30 minutes from now we've kind of barely gotten started. We're going to take some time to get through this.
Jeffrey Heine:Also at the start, I want to go ahead and recommend that you listen to, one of our elders, Thomas Ritchie. He preached on this text, I think sometime in 2011. It's online. And it is a fantastic job, doing it. And I thought for a moment of just almost bringing a CD player up here and just hitting play, but I'm not gonna do that.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm gonna see what I can maybe flesh out and add to some of the words that He has already said. So let's just go ahead and jump right in. The story begins with Jesus leaving the Judean countryside and returning back to Galilee. Verse 3 says that Jesus left Judea, departed for Galilee, and there's nothing unusual about that, but verse 4 is a little unusual. We read, and he had to pass through Samaria.
Jeffrey Heine:Now it's true that if Jesus had, you know, got out his phone and Google mapped it, going through Samaria was the quicker, more direct route, but Jews avoided Samaria like one would avoid the plague. They would never go through Samaria. Even if it meant adding an extra day of travel, they would do that. And so typically they would go to the Jordan Valley, they would go up and hit Jericho and then turn in. And that's what Jesus had already done before when he had traveled to Galilee.
Jeffrey Heine:But here, he decides to go through Samaria. It kind of reminds me the way people would go around Samaria is when when Lauren and I, we did college ministry a number of years ago. And during that time, we lived in Crestwood when it was called Crestwood. It, you know, 16, 17 years ago. And we would try to get Sanford students to come over.
Jeffrey Heine:And there's 2 different ways you could lead them to our house. You can either lead them the direct way, which went straight through Woodlawn, or you could lead them the indirect way that took them through through Mountain Brook. And every time we took them through Mountain Brook, because we wanted them to actually feel safe coming to our house and not turn around and go back. And Samaria was like that. It's like even though you knew you could go through and was more direct, you wanted to avoid it.
Jeffrey Heine:And the reason the Jews avoided Samaria is because, was because the Samaritans were a despised people. There was a deep hatred of the Jew from between the Jews and the Samaritans that went back 100 of years, all the way to the time of the exile. When the Assyrians came and invaded Israel a few 100 years earlier, they deported out the best and the brightest of the Jews, and they took them to Assyria where they would reeducate them, And left behind were the not so bright and the not the best Jews left in Israel. And of that group, the ones that were in Samaria actually committed heresy and apostasy, many of them. And they even began marrying some of the Assyrians.
Jeffrey Heine:They began marrying the enemy, and raising families with them. And so when the Jews were in exile and Assyria returned and they saw the Samaritans, they saw all of these half breeds, these heretical half breeds, and they despise them. And so to even walk through the land of Samaria now and to interact with these people, to buy their food, to drink their water, would make you ceremonial unclean. So Jews would avoid Samaria like the plague, and they would go around it, even though this meant more time. But Jesus didn't.
Jeffrey Heine:Perhaps a better way to say is that Jesus couldn't go another way. Verse 4 says that he had to go to Samaria. Some of your translations might read that he must go through Samaria. And the Greek word there means it was an absolute necessity that he goes to Samaria. The question is why?
Jeffrey Heine:Why was this an absolute necessity that Jesus had to take this route? He wasn't in a rush. He wasn't late for some meeting in Judea or Galilee. But yet he had to go. And I think he knew that the spirit of God was setting up an appointment for him in that place.
Jeffrey Heine:And so I believe what we're seeing here is the spirit of God prompting Jesus to take this route in order to meet with this one woman. This is why Jesus had to go there. This is Spirit led evangelism. Jesus felt in His Spirit the Holy Spirit nudging Him not to go the normal route, but to go this way because he had a divine appointment for him. And so when Jesus meets this woman at the well, he realizes that this is not coincidence.
Jeffrey Heine:This is providence at work. Has anything like this ever happened to you? I think John includes these words had to or must here, because he wants us as a church to see what Spirit led evangelism looks like. If we were to open up our hearts and our minds to the Spirit's work, are gonna be times that he will lead us to what I would call divine appointments. The question is, are we praying for the Spirit's leading?
Jeffrey Heine:Are we asking for this in the morning? Not just in life in general, but are we asking God, lead me to places and to people in which you can use me as an instrument of grace in their life? And I would say, if you are not doing that, I would encourage you to do so. When you wake up in the morning, ask the spirit of God for your marching orders. Go before him and just say, what would he have me to do today?
Jeffrey Heine:Let that be the first thing you do. Don't don't let the first thing that you do is, is maybe open up your computer and and and read the news, thoughts be, spirit of God, what would you have for me today? What are your orders for me? And I guarantee that if you do that, he will begin setting up divine appointments for you to share your faith. I've shared this in the past.
Jeffrey Heine:I won't go into it at length again, but a number of years back, I'm just sitting there, and I really felt the spirit of God put in my heart that I needed to go to Ireland, and to share my faith with a man I barely remember, whose name I didn't, or whose I didn't know where he lived, but I felt this impulse that I needed to go. And so I talked to my wife about that, and she said, we'll go. And so I bought the first plane ticket I could to go there, And, I went to Ireland just like, Lord lead me. How am I gonna find this guy? And he led me right to this guy's house.
Jeffrey Heine:And I was able to sit down and share my faith with him. And and this was just, that's one of those success stories that's really cool, and that rarely happens to me, because most of my stories are failures. There was another time I could remember God, I thought it was God putting on my heart, go downtown, stand by the fountain. I want you to share your faith with somebody there. And I was like, great.
Jeffrey Heine:And so I go downtown, I'm sitting by the fountain and I'm waiting. Nobody shows up. So I wait for another hour. And another hour, it gets about midnight, and I'm like, all right, maybe it was indigestion. I'm not sure what I felt, but it wasn't the Holy Spirit.
Jeffrey Heine:Now, I don't think for a moment that God was up there going, what an idiot. I mean, like, what an idiot. You know, just laughing at me. No, he might have been thinking some other things, but I don't think that's that's what he was thinking right there. At least there was a willingness.
Jeffrey Heine:And I always think of it this way, that a moving car is easier to steer than one that is parked still. And I would rather take those risks and be moving and let God direct me than to just sit. And I would encourage you to do the same. Will you miss it at times? Yes.
Jeffrey Heine:Because you're human. Often, our ears and our hearts are clogged, and we don't hear the Lord like we should. But take those risks. Listen to that still small voice. So Jesus is led to go through Samaria, and when He comes to the town of Sychar, He gets really tired.
Jeffrey Heine:I can't tell you as a minister what comfort this is to read this here, that Jesus, the son of God, got physically tired. He was flesh and blood, and he had to rest. He stopped at Jacob's well. And apparently Jesus is sensing that it's here, that this might be the very time and place that the Lord wants to do something, so he sends off all of his disciples to where he is left alone here at this well at this time. And it's here he meets this Samaritan woman at noon.
Jeffrey Heine:Now we don't know much about this woman at this point. We do know that coming to the well at this time would have been really unusual. Women typically would come to draw water early in the morning. It was kind of a social gathering event in which which all the the women would come when it was not hot, and they would meet around the well, socialize with one another, and they would get their water. But this woman is coming at the heat of day when nobody would be there.
Jeffrey Heine:And so we kinda get a glimpse into her life right off the start that perhaps she isn't very comfortable around other women, or perhaps she is avoiding them. Maybe she feels like an outsider. And we're gonna find out later that that's very much the case, that she was probably embarrassed and full of shame and didn't want to be around any other women. When she comes to the well, she finds Jesus just sitting there, and instantly there would have been a whole lot of tension in this moment. There was of course the racial tension with Jesus being a Jew and her being a Samaritan, but then there was the added tension of Jesus being a man and her being a woman.
Jeffrey Heine:We know from documents at this time that if a man and woman were left together, that it was appropriate for the man to back away and to give the woman space. One commentary I read said that you should give the woman 20 spaces, a space. Something I think might not be bad advice still today, to give the woman some room. But it was a way of saying, Hey, I'm no threat to You you can relax. I'm I'm not gonna hurt you.
Jeffrey Heine:But Jesus, he didn't back away. Not only did he not back away, he began to talk with her. And this was highly irregular in this day for a man to talk to a woman like this in public. Jesus, He's crossing barriers here, and He's gonna keep crossing barriers and keep crossing barriers until finally He exposes the biggest barrier there, which is her sin. That's what he's getting at, is the biggest barrier of all.
Jeffrey Heine:Next, Jesus asked her for drink. The only way I can describe this, I mean, it's so there's so much tension and awkwardness here. The only way I could describe it is that this would be like back in the sixties, a white man going to a water fountain that says, For Colored People, and he goes to get a drink. And he sees a woman there filling up a water bottle, and he says, can I have some of your water? Awkward.
Jeffrey Heine:Everybody would have thought, what do you do? That goes against every norm of the day. But Jesus is breaking down all of these barriers because he wants to pursue this woman. The woman responds to him by asking how it is that him, a Jew, can talk to her, a Samaritan, for a drink. And so she points out the racial barrier, and she points out the gender related barrier, barriers that are present, and wonders, why are you making things so awkward here?
Jeffrey Heine:Why are you doing this? Jesus responds to her in verse 10. Look at verse 10 with me. 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. This gift of God, we know from John, you know we looked at John 3 16 a couple weeks ago, for God so loved the world that he gave his son.
Jeffrey Heine:So Jesus is obviously a gift from God, but I think in particular in this situation, the gift here is his holy spirit. The gift is the living water that Jesus is going to talk about. And Jesus says if you knew about this living water, if you knew this gift I had to offer, and if you knew who I was, then you would ask me for a drink. So this woman's confused. Look at verse 11 and 12.
Jeffrey Heine: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? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock. This woman responds with what I think is a little bit of sarcasm, possibly a way of kind of pushing him off.
Jeffrey Heine:She says, and just how do you think you're going to get me water when you didn't bring a bucket? And matter of fact, who do you think you are? Who do you think you are? You think you're greater than Jacob? Now, without knowing it, I think this woman actually asked Jesus a pretty deep question here when she asked Him, tell me, how are you gonna draw this water?
Jeffrey Heine:How are you gonna do it? How can Jesus give her eternal life? How can he give her the spirit of God? And the answer is that for Jesus to give this woman living water, it will indeed cost him a lot. This water is gonna be drawn from his veins.
Jeffrey Heine:It's it's in the gospel of John that we find this unique story, that when Jesus died, it's there that we see the the soldier piercing his side, and it says, the blood and water flows out. And John wants he recorded that because he wants that image in our minds that it took the death of Jesus to bring us the fountain that we drink from. Jesus would pay a tremendous cost for us to have this living water, But this woman doesn't yet understand. She thinks that Jesus is talking just about running water, because that's how they would describe running water. They called it living water.
Jeffrey Heine:And so Jesus presses in further. He makes it even more awkward. He's not scared of awkward conversations. Verse 13. Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever.
Jeffrey Heine:The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Jesus says if you would drink the water that I'm gonna give you, you'll never have thirst again. And what Jesus means here is not that if you take a sip of this, you're never going to be thirsty. What he means is that you drink from this, I give you a fountain, and so you will never be hopelessly thirsty. Because you could keep drinking, and you could keep drinking and you can keep drinking.
Jeffrey Heine:There will always be satisfaction for your thirst. Now Jesus is making an assumption here, an assumption that I think we can make as well, and that's that this woman is thirsty, and that all humans are thirsty. That there is a deep thirst that defines who we are as people. Jesus can make this assumption because He knows that's the condition of every person who has walked this earth since Adam fell. We are thirsty people.
Jeffrey Heine:We we long for someone or we long for something, anything that can quench this this desire that we have. This thirst is what drives us. It is never ending. And so we keep pursuing what we think is a fountain, and then we go to another fountain, and then we go to another fountain. We keep drinking from different wells, and yet we're never satisfied.
Jeffrey Heine:And for some of us, this leads to us going to a well of lust, or a well of sex, in which we go from relationship to relationship, trying to quench this burning thirst we have. For others, this has led us to drink from wells of financial prosperity in which we think, you know, if we just get a bigger house, if we could just move into a nicer neighborhood, just getting a good school system, that will quench it. Some of you would be happy for just so you know it, extra bedroom or in a half bath. You know, that's your desire. That's what you want.
Jeffrey Heine:I I I sometimes, I'd take a spin class, at the gym. And, you know, you're just in there peddling away. And there's only so many ways they could say, keep turning it. You know, so they're trying they're trying to talk to you and inspire you. And, one of the instructors is a woman.
Jeffrey Heine:And last time I took the class, this was her words of inspiration. She goes, Come on, it's bikini season. Come on, you're going to the beach. Think beach people. And you wanna get out there and when you have the reveal, you want everybody looking to see your beach bikini body.
Jeffrey Heine:And I'm just thinking, really? That's our goal, that's our desire, that's why we're on this hamster So do you really think that will last? You think when you become 50, 60, 70, 80, you're gonna look, you know, just people are gonna wanna look at you in a bikini out on the beach. It's fading. It's a well that runs dry.
Jeffrey Heine:Our thirst might lead us to other wells, like wells of acceptance, thinking if you could just get in the right book club, just be invited to that social event, or just kinda have that circle of friends, things will be alright. Or maybe you drink from a well of power and you think, if I could just kind of move up the ladder enough to where I can, I can be my own boss, where nobody could tell me what to do, Finally, this will be quenched, but it will never be quenched? These things will not satisfy. Jeremiah describes our condition this way. In Jeremiah 2, but my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit.
Jeffrey Heine:Be appalled, oh heavens, at this. Be shocked. Be utterly desolate. Pretty strong language. For my people have committed 2 evils.
Jeffrey Heine:They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and have whoed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. Drinking from anything other than God is drinking from a broken cistern. A cistern you've had to hew out of stone. You have worked really hard for this cistern, yet it will not hold water. Have any of you, how have you felt when you finally got that thing you've really been wanting, you know, for a few weeks or maybe for a few years, and you finally got it?
Jeffrey Heine:How did you feel? I bet you actually felt pretty good, because when you, when you were able to sip from that, it quenched thirst. I bet you felt pretty good, but then I also bet you got thirsty again, and it would not satisfy. It was good for a sip, but it wouldn't quench the thirst you have. And the reason is this, because every want you have ever had is really a want for Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:Sin has distorted this, has made you pursue lesser things, but you were made to be satisfied in Jesus and to drink from him. He is that cool, refreshing water that you go to over and over for all of life. Now, like us, this Samaritan woman's a little slow. She doesn't get it. And so in verse 15, she says that she would really like to not have to go to the well every day.
Jeffrey Heine:So if Jesus could do something about that, that'd be great. So Jesus responds to her with these words in verse 16 and 18, to make things really awkward. Jesus said to her, go call your husband and come here. The woman answered, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, you are right in saying I have no husband, for you have had 5 husbands.
Jeffrey Heine:And the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true. So the conversation goes like this. Okay, sir. Would you give me this water?
Jeffrey Heine:Go get your husband. It's kind of a, you know, disconnect. It just seems like the, where did that come from? Almost seems like Jesus is changing the topic here, but he's not. Not at all, he's not changing it.
Jeffrey Heine:He's actually going in deeper. We now find out why this woman has been coming to the well at noon. It's to avoid seeing people. She is ashamed. She's been married 5 times.
Jeffrey Heine:And now she's in an adulterous relationship. Can you imagine the stares she would get if she were to go to the well where all these women were? Can you imagine the, the hush tones, oh here she is, y'all be quiet. Here she is. That probably followed her everywhere she went.
Jeffrey Heine:She was a social outcast amongst a people of social outcast. So so she is the lowest of the low here. Now we have no idea why she's been married 5 times. We don't know if each time she left her husband because her husband didn't meet her needs, or if it was the other way around, maybe the husband thought she was too needy or too clingy and then he left. It doesn't really matter either way.
Jeffrey Heine:This was a shameful thing, and Jesus now exposes her. Sir, give me this water. Go get your husband. What Jesus is doing here is exposing in her life broken cisterns that will not hold water. This woman has been going to man after man after man, trying to satisfy this thirsting that she has.
Jeffrey Heine:But no matter how many men she is married, she would find that none of them would quench her thirst. But she didn't know what else to do, and so she would just try to find another man, thinking, well, maybe the next one will be different. Maybe the next one will be different. But it will never be different. And what this is is idolatry.
Jeffrey Heine:Idolatry is going to another person or another thing in order to satisfy what only God can satisfy. Idolatry is finding your worth in any other person or thing other than God. Idolatry is drinking from a broken cistern. So Jesus is calling this woman away from idolatry, away from broken cisterns, in order for her to come to Him and have a drink. It's no coincidence as well here that all of this is happening at Jacob's well, at a well.
Jeffrey Heine:I've I've already mentioned here that there was racial tension, some gender tension, some theological tension, but there was also some sexual tension here. Going to a well was a was a common way to go and find a wife. Isaac found his wife at a well. Jacob found his wife at a well. Moses found his wife at a well.
Jeffrey Heine:The the the list goes on. And being single and going to a well was kind of like going to Avondale Brewery. You know, if you're single, it's the bar. It's where you're going to go to and try to find people. So here's Jesus, he is alone with this woman at the bar or at the well, and he says this, hey, I noticed you're not wearing a wedding ring.
Jeffrey Heine:Are you married? There would have been tension here. But what Jesus is getting at here is that he has indeed come to this well to find a bride. He has. Jesus is in the process of building his church.
Jeffrey Heine:He's in the process of calling his bride to himself. And when he says that he can give her a fountain, he is unblushingly saying that he can meet the every longing of her heart if she would just ask Him. You know, when Jesus was on the cross, the gospel of John records that he cried out, I thirst. I thirst. And the reason Jesus cried out, I thirst, was so that we might never be thirsty again.
Jeffrey Heine:He's not talking about a physical thirst there. He's talking about being forsaken by God, having the the living water denied him. That was taken away from him and he felt for the first time in his life this spiritual thirst. And so He cries it out. So He felt that abandonment, that forsakenness, that dryness, so that we might never feel that way.
Jeffrey Heine:So that we might drink freely from the living waters. I'd be remiss if we didn't end by going back to verse 10 and going into a prayer time from this. Look with me again in verse 10. Because I want us I want us to be praying for this living water. And Jesus says this.
Jeffrey Heine:He says, 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. Jesus says if we know the gift, if we know who he is, the result is we become an asking people. So whatever picture of belief you have in your mind, what believing looks like, what being a Christian believing looks like, Jesus says this, believing manifests itself through asking. You wanna know if you believe, do you ask? Do you come to Jesus and ask for this living water?
Jeffrey Heine:We're gonna look more at that next week. But I want us to end by taking time where we can corporately, as a church, we can pray for this living water. And also pray that God would open up the doors and send us out to share the news of this living water with others.
