Thirsty and Satisfied

Good morning church, it is a joy and a privilege to be with you today. If you are new here this morning and don’t know me, my name is Ryan Patterson and I am the pastor of worship and young adults. My exhortation usually comes in the form of singing or at least behind a guitar so I am praying that God would grant me the grace to put on display His glory from behind the pulpit this morning. It is such a joy to lead you in the singing portion of our worship week to week and my aim whether it’s behind a guitar, behind a pulpit, or behind a coffee table at my favorite coffee shop Push N Pour (shameless plug), is to have the Word of Christ dwell richly in our hearts in such a way that it propels us to worship Jesus in every way, shape, and form (yes in our singing, but ultimately in our living). To be honest with you, when Jason asked if I’d preach John 4:1-29, the first thing I thought was, “Oh sure, the give the worship pastor the passage about worshipping Jesus in Spirit and Truth.” If I had a dollar for every book on worship that has been written surrounding John 4:23-24 and worshipping Jesus in Spirit and Truth and how that explains our form of worship, I’d have a few hundred more dollars to my name. And while this passage can certainly help inform our approach to “worship” in the church, I’m certain that John didn’t have hymns, contemporary worship songs, organs, or rock bands on his mind when he wrote down those words of Jesus and I’m certain Jesus didn’t have those things on His mind when He spoke them to the woman at the well that we’ll meet this morning.That said, I’d like to start at the end of our passage today with one of the most compelling invitations we read in the New Testament. This comes from verse 29 of John 4 where we’ll be this morning. The compelling invitation that comes to us from the women at the well in this chapter is this: “Come and see a man who told me all that I ever did! Can this be the Christ?” While that invitation was ultimately extended to the villagers in Sychar, it’s the invitation God is extending to us this morning through His holy word.Imagine with me for a minute that you are sitting at your favorite restaurant, outside on the patio, catching up with an old friend. A less than reputable woman that you may be familiar with comes running over towards you guys and says, “Come see a man who’s told me everything I’ve ever done.” You’d be thinking to yourself either she’s crazy, given the context of this woman that you’d already be familiar with who was known for frivolous relationships with perhaps less than reputable men, OR something so compelling has caught her attention that she couldn’t help but come running back into town risking her already damaged dignity telling people about this seemingly supernatural encounter that she’s had with this guy. And then she says, “Can this be the Christ?” The answer I’d submit to you this morning is that our character in this story had truly encountered the most compelling person she’d ever met. The interesting thing about being compelled is that for something to be compelling it typically pulls us away from what initially had our attention. The object that is compelling us is compelling us away from things that had our attention towards itself which is objectively more intriguing and/or valuable and therefore worth our time and attention. That’s what makes something that’s compelling so compelling. The danger about being compelled towards something or someone is that our compulsions and needs often dictate what is compelling to us.Church, we are born with an unquenchable thirst. Unfulfillment is a plague that has consumed humanity since her inception. Certainly you experienced some of that this morning. Perhaps a bad night’s rest left you feeling tired and you thought to yourself, “If only I got a better night’s rest I would feel refreshed and wouldn’t have acted out in anger towards my family and therefore would’ve come to church in a better attitude and ready to worship the Lord.” Or maybe it’s more along the lines of, “If only I had a job where my boss wasn’t so difficult and the work wasn’t so life-taking, I’d be much more fulfilled and would greet each day with the kind of energy and excitement to serve the Lord that I long for.” You fill in the blank: if I had more money, better friendships, a different reputation, and the list goes on and on and on.We are a people of need and we are constantly looking for ways, or things to meet those needs so that we can quench what we come to see as an “unquenchable thirst.” This morning we are going to look at an incredible story from John 4 that reveals the heart’s greatest need. We’ll be introduced to a woman who woke up like any other day with what she perceived to be a normal need, like water, only to have her greatest need exposed to her by the most compelling person she had or would ever meet and that is Jesus! Let’s start by reading the first 15 verses of John 4 together.In these first 15 verses we’re going to look at two reasons why Jesus is compelling. The first we’re going to look at is that Jesus is compelling because: His calling is regardless of status, race, gender, pedigree, or background. Let’s look at the comparison John gives us in the two interactions we have between Jesus and people we encounter in John 3 and 4. Last week we looked at Nicodemus, a self-made man. On the council of the Sanhedrin, what would be known as the Jewish Supreme Court, and a Pharisee at that. Even his name, which is Greek by the way, translates as “victor over the people.” Needless to say, he was who you wanted to be if you were looking to establish prominence within Jewish culture. A man, studied and positioned amongst the Sanhedrin, with a place of prominence and power within his people. It’s against that backdrop that we see Jesus’s next personal intimate human encounter.Enter the woman at the well. A woman, a Samaritan at that, or rather known as a “half breed” amongst the Jews, fetching water at the sixth hour. If John uses the Jewish reckoning of time with sunrise starting at 6:00 am ,it would have been roughly noon, or if he used Roman time it would have been 6 hours from 12:00 pm meaning it would’ve been roughly 6:00 pm. Either way, this is an extremely hot and inconvenient part of the day, which indicates that she didn’t want to fetch water with the other women in the cool of the day, or more likely they didn’t want her, which means she was a despised member of society in an already despised society. We’ll learn in verses 16-18 that she has a live in lover with many previous frivolous relationships with men.Could you come up with a more drastic scope of humanity upon which Jesus enters the scene? Nicodemus the Jew of Jews and the despised Samaritan woman of Sychar.Church, undoubtedly this morning there are Nicodemuses in here. Perhaps your moral obligations and obedient tendencies have left you feeling like you “have it together.” We live in a culture that honors hard work. And there is nothing wrong with hard work. If you work hard at school you get a diploma and good GPA. This is rewarded by getting you into a good college. You work hard in college and get a degree and this is rewarded by landing you a good job. You work hard at your job and this is rewarded with a promotion and inevitably a pay raise and on and on the cycle of merited favor goes. And there is nothing wrong with that cycle… in this economy. But the economy of grace completely blows that notion out of the water! It says there isn’t enough good works that can earn you a place of favor with God! As Augustus Toplady, the hymn writer, said in his hymn Rock of Ages, “Not the labor of my hands can fulfill thy laws demands. Could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow. All for sin could NOT atone. THOU must save and THOU ALONE!” If you find yourself resonating with Nicodemus in here this morning, then know this, Jesus has an answer for your condition!Church, undoubtedly there are women at the well in here this morning. You take one long look at your life and think to yourself, “I’ve made a wreck of this, beyond repair. I have sinned beyond measure, and there is NO hope for a despised Samaritan woman at the well like myself.” If you find that to be your position this morning, than know this, Jesus has an answer for your condition. What is this answer you say!? Well let’s look back at the text and continue on with our story.Jesus and His disciples leave Judea to depart for Galilee and have to pass through Samaria, which most Jews did despite their distaste for Samaritans because the alternative would’ve been an inconvenient detour through Transjordan which was largely Gentile, and He arrives about half a mile north of the town Sychar, the intended destination, at a well, Jacob’s well to be precise. And look at what the text says in verse 6, “Jesus wearied from the journey sits down at the well at about the sixth hour.” Before we move on, let’s camp here for a minute. Church, let’s not miss an incredible part of John’s descriptive narrative here. Jesus was weary and undoubtedly thirsty hence the next thing to come out of His mouth. The creator of the universe, the one who took two hydrogen atoms and linked them together through a chemical bond to an oxygen atom to form a water molecule, was thirsty. Oh the depths our Savior stooped to take on the form of humanity to save humanity from the curse! If we miss that we miss this whole narrative and really the purpose of the gospel of John and ultimately the whole point of Scripture.We read on in verses 7-9 and see here the transcendent love of Christ. There are so many ceremonial laws being broken here and I wish we had the time to go back in time and look at the tense history between these two people groups. The nation of Israel splits politically after Solomon’s rule into a northern and southern kingdom and the northern kingdom (aka Samaria) is thrown into captivity by the Assyrians leading to the pollution of that “pure” line, hence the half-breed association. If we had time, we would go over how all of that puts God’s sovereign redemptive plan on display, but we don’t, so suffice it to say there is a lot of bad blood between Jews and Samaritans. And yet Jesus says four simple words that would change this woman’s life forever, “Give me a drink.”The woman, who would have been well associated with all the cultural and historical nuances surrounding the cloudy history between these two people groups, is completely surprised at Jesus’s request, and for good reason. The Jews worshiped in Jerusalem. Samaritans worshiped at the temple on mount Gerizim until it was destroyed in 108 BC. By relating in any way to a Samaritan as a Jew, you would have run the risk of incurring ritual defilement. Not only that, most Jews held to the notion that all Samaritan women were in a perpetual state of ceremonial uncleanness. So no wonder Jesus’s request left her dumbfounded, like “What are you doing!” But notice Jesus’s response. He doesn’t indulge the political, religious, racial, or socioeconomic disparity between the two that she immediately responds with. He goes right to the point that brought him to that divine appointment.This is where we come to our next reason why Jesus is compelling: His calling actually quenches our thirst. It’s effective. Here in verse 10 Jesus begins to shift the conversation in a way that would leave her speechless. He says to her, “Woman, if one you knew who was sitting here with you, if you only knew. The request would be reversed. You would ask of me and I would give to you living water.”O church, how often are we in this same position of willful ignorance? We go to the wells of our desires in hopes that they would fill us, when in reality the Maker of the universe sits at the well with us saying if only you knew who was offering you life. But that is the devastating reality of our sin. It blinds us to the truth of who God is. We sit with the Creator of the universe and deny His goodness and His call. C.S. Lewis said it really well when he said, "It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”This is our condition, we are blind to our needs and don’t know what is being offered to us even if we wanted to. But church, what good news it is that this Savior so happens to be the best optometrist in the universe and is in the business of making blind eyes see!And even now the woman continues to be blinded at the reality Jesus is bringing to her in verse 10. He’s not talking about water at all. No, He’s talking about Life. But we see in her response to His offer a feeling of being incensed that moves to wonder. And it would seem strange, would it not? She’s looking at him thinking, “Why would I ask you for water, you don’t even have a bucket to draw water with.” Not only that, but the idea of living water which in her mind she might be thinking the bubbling spring water that lies below the standing water in the well. Jacob’s well is estimated to be over 100 feet deep and Jesus has no way of reaching and collecting the water at the bottom. We see the negatively implied assumption when she says, “Are you better than our Father Jacob?” The Samaritans traced their lineage back to Jacob by way of Joseph who was given Jacob’s plot of land known as Shechem on his death bed back in Genesis 48. This piece of history was dear to them and she is saying if this was good enough for our mighty father Jacob and his sons who are you to say that it’s not good enough for me, or that you offer something better?But Jesus engages her bewilderment even deeper with His answer, look again at verses 13 and 14. He answers her rhetorical question not simply with a yes but with a resounding YES and here is why: what I offer actually quenches thirst! Jesus appeals to her craving for ultimate rest and satisfaction by offering her something that ultimately brings rest and satisfies! And look at the uniqueness even in how Jesus responds with this hope. New Testament commentator William Hendriksen puts it this way and I think is such a helpful visual.Physical Water from Jacob’s well: cannot prevent one from becoming thirsty again and again and again. The Living Water that Jesus provides: makes one lose thirst for all time (in other words it gives lasting satisfaction).Physical Water from Jacob’s well: remains outside of the soul and is incapable of filling it’s needs. The Living Water that Jesus provides: enters into the soul and remains within as a source of spiritual refreshment and satisfaction.Physical Water from Jacob’s well: is limited in quantity, lessens and disappears whenever we drink it. The Living Water that Jesus provides: is a self perpetuating spring. Here on earth it sustains a person spiritually, but it also gives us a view unto eternal life.Church, do you see how much better Jesus is than any other well we run to to quench our thirst? Jesus isn’t just better than Jacob, or his well, He’s better than EVERYTHING!By this point the woman is intrigued. And to be honest Church, I’m not certain how much she understood the spiritual implications of what Jesus was saying and offering. She undoubtedly knew that this stranger named Jesus would most certainly be better than Jacob if He could make good on His promise by offering water that indefinitely satisfied her physical thirst. I mean look at verse 15: she’s convinced she wants this water, especially if it means that she doesn’t have to high tail it to this well every day at noon or 6:00 pm to fetch water.But Church, this is where Jesus blows the lid off the thing and shows us our final two ways we’ll look at this morning as to why he is compelling in these next 9 verses. Let’s read verses 16-29 together. Jesus is compelling because: He exposes who we are.Jesus takes a deep dive here and exposes something about her that he couldn’t have known otherwise (other than that we know from the text He indeed knew). The woman was obviously still not understanding the heart of the matter Jesus was getting at, so He moves to something she would understand by illuminating her eyes to her own personal, spiritual, and moral failure as a human.Church, when Jesus exposes us at our core it’s because He is the only one who knows our inward being. David talks about this when he is repenting of his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah in Psalm 51:6 when he says, “Behold you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.” And while there seems to be a total abrupt change in subject from water to her interpersonal relationships, I would submit to you that Jesus is making a deep connection here between her request and His answer. Just one verse prior she says, “Sir give me this water,” not even realizing what she’s asking for. How often do we do this when assessing our own needs as humans? We think we are asking the right question and getting at our deepest need but in reality, we need Jesus to expose who we are even to ourselves.One commentator put is so well when he said, “There is a close connection between the woman’s request and Christ’s command to call her husband. Does the woman desire living water? Then there must be a thirst for this water. This thirst will not be truly awakened unless there be a sense of guilt, a consciousness of sin. The mention of her husband is the best means of reminding this woman of her immoral life and therefore her actual need. The Lord is now addressing Himself to her conscience.” This is the incredible thing about God’s effectual and sovereign call of the sinner. He awakens the soul to its need for Him! Jesus has just pressed into her true need and she is speechless but to say, “I have no husband.” Jesus begins to expose the moral dilemma she lives in daily. Whether or not her previous husbands had died, or there had been moral failings on one or both sides, or a combination of both, the reality stands that she now stands with her live-in lover, completely undone before the Messiah guilty as charged. In one sentence, Jesus lays bare her past and present condition. But Church, this is what the gospel of Christ does, it shines a light on the irreversible condition of man’s heart and backs it into a corner until the only way out is Jesus!In verse 19, she even tries to skirt the issue by declaring Him a prophet or literally translated a “reader of secrets” and then goes back to her narrative about historical and cultural practices of worship (the Jews worshipping in Jerusalem and the perhaps referencing the Samaritan’s worshipping on mount Gerizim). Was her motive to redirect the conversation, we don’t know. It’s probable because she did that once already by giving a less than genuine answer regarding her husband. Regardless, Jesus again moves in even further. He’s prepared the soil of the heart by exposing her condition and now He begins His grand reveal. This is where we come to our fourth and final point of why Jesus is compelling. He’s compelling not only because He exposes who we are but because: He reveals who He is.Jesus answers her rebuttal regarding ceremonial places of worship to say the hour is coming and is here when the important question isn’t where you worship, but who you worship and therefore how you worship. He’s saying look, all that your fathers were looking forward to and preparing for is here now and you don’t even see it. Jesus is building the case that He Himself is the hallowed ground upon which men will worship. William Cowper made this sentiment clear in one of his hymns when he said: “Where’er thy people meet, there they behold thy mercy seat. Where’er they seek thee thou art found and every place is hallowed ground.” This is because Jesus comes establishing worship in the heart! Worshipping Jesus in Spirit and Truth is whole body worship.F. Bruce said it well when he said: “God is Spirit. It is not merely that He is a spirit among other spirits. Rather God Himself is pure spirit and the worship in which He takes delight is accordingly spiritual worship- the sacrifice of a humble contrite grateful and adorning Spirit. This affirmation of our Lords was not entirely new; it but crowns the witness of the psalmists and prophets of earlier ages who saw that material things could at best be the vehicle of true worship but could never belong to it’s essence. The essence of worship then, is sincere heart devotion of a changed heart, indispensable as men and women present to God worship which he accepts which is worship in Spirit and Truth.”Church, the hard reality Jesus is leading the woman at the well to is the same hard reality He is leading us to and that is that apart from the Spirit of God, we can’t muster up worship that is acceptable to God. Again quoting from Augustus Toplady’s hymn Rock of Ages, he says, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling. Naked come to thee for dress. Helpless look to thee for grace. Foul I to the fountain fly, wash me Savior or I die.”We stand before the Lord of Lords with our hearts fully exposed before Him. He knows everything we’ve ever done. And it’s in that moment He reveals Himself, the answer to this woman’s condition. The answer to Nicodemus’s condition. The answer to our condition.The woman looks at Jesus now making the connection that Jesus is referring to the Messiah and says, “I know he is coming, the one who has been foretold who will make all things right.” And Jesus finally says to her, “I who speak to you am He.” He, whom the Jews expected as the promised prince of the house of David, the Lion of Judah, the sacrificial lamb, the better Adam, the one worthy to open the scroll at the end of the book, the Lord and Savior all creation had been holding its breath for was here, it was Him, Jesus, the thirsty Jewish man, sitting near the edge of the well talking to a Samaritan woman in desperate need of a Savior. Church, He is Jesus. He was the Messiah she needed and the Messiah we need.And the woman, stunned, leaves her water jar, the thing she had brought with her to satisfy her need for water, and leaves with the message of this compelling King who would satisfy not only thirst but life itself. She runs back into Sychar announcing the compelling encounter saying, “Come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” A man compelling because:He saves regardless of where we come fromHe actually quenches our thirst and satisfies the soulHe exposes who we are because he knows who we are at our deepest levelHe reveals who he isChurch, as we close, I’d like you to just listen to this quote by Tim Keller from his book Encounters With Jesus:“Everybody has got to live for something, but Jesus is arguing that, if he is not that thing, it will fail you. First, it will enslave you. Whatever that thing is, you will tell yourself that you have to have it or there is no tomorrow. That means that if anything threatens it, you will become inordinately scared; if anyone blocks it, you will become inordinately angry; and if you fail to achieve it, you will never be able to forgive yourself. But second, if you do achieve it, it will fail to deliver the fulfillment you expected. Let me give you an eloquent contemporary expression of what Jesus is saying. Nobody put this better than the American writer David Foster Wallace. He got to the top of his profession. He was an award-winning, bestselling postmodern novelist known around the world for his boundary-pushing storytelling. He once wrote a sentence that was more than a thousand words long. A few years before the end of his life, he gave a now-famous commencement speech at Kenyon College. He said to the graduating class, ‘Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god . . . to worship . . . is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before [your loved ones] finally plant you. . . . Worship power, and you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they are evil or sinful; it is that they’re unconscious. They are our default settings.’ Wallace was by no means a religious person, but he understood that everyone worships, everyone trusts in something for their salvation, everyone bases their lives on something that requires faith. A couple of years after giving that speech, Wallace killed himself. And this nonreligious man’s parting words to us are pretty terrifying: ‘Something will eat you alive.’ Because even though you might never call it worship, you can be absolutely sure you are worshiping and you are seeking. And Jesus says, ‘Unless you’re worshipping me, unless I’m the center of your life, unless you’re trying to get your spiritual thirst quenched through me and not through these other things, unless you see that the solution must come inside rather than just pass by outside, then whatever you worship will abandon you in the end.’”The woman asks, “Can this be the Christ?” Answer: YES HE IS! My question to you this morning, is He your Christ? If not, leave your water jar at the well and run to Him! Run to Jesus! Fall on your knees and say, “Jesus expose me and reveal yourself to me. Forgive me of trying to quench my thirst with anything but You and give me water that leads to everlasting life and satisfaction in You, my living water.” Let’s pray.