John 4:5-29

So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[a])

10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 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.”

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

17 “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

The Disciples Rejoin Jesus

27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”

Discussion notes

Phenomenal story: Jesus and the woman 

What gives you life?  

“you would have asked and he would have given you living water”. In short he says, “I can give you living water.” (verse 10) 

Is there something physical you are looking to for life? Yes No   

 If so, what is it?   

The ______________ __________ (physical stuff) of life cannot give life. 

“the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (verse 14) 

What’s driving you and filling you with life? _______________ 

Everyone needs something _____________ (inside) filling them with life.   

Live for what gives life.   

Sermon

Phenomenal story. It’s about Jesus and a woman who lives with another man. They meet at the local watering hole about noon. Literally, the watering hole. Not the bar.  

When the whole thing is done, look at the end of this story. The woman runs back to town. She tells all these people, “I’ve met someone who has told me everything I’ve done. Come and see.”  

Here is why that is incredible.  

First, have you ever, ever met someone who said, “I met someone who told me all the bad things I did in life and told me that I was worse off than I imagined. It was so awesome. You’ve got to come meet this guy.” That’s what she was saying to the other people.  

The reason she met Jesus in the first place is that whether they excluded her or she just felt excluded, she was filled with shame. She didn’t go to the well with everyone else.  

The reason she didn’t go to the well with everyone else was that she was divorced five times. Even today in our free sex life, people don’t divorce 5 times. I tried to look up the number of people on their fifth marriage or divorce. Couldn’t find it. Send em over if you do. Stop googling. Do it later.  

She was also one of those free religious thinkers. You know, the kind everyone hates because they’re always saying, “yeah, but what about?” By the way, I think I’m one of those. Somehow every time all the pastors get together, I get ‘em all worked up.  

She basically says to Jesus, I’m thinking about which religion to be part of: Samaritan or Jewish. What do you think?  

She has done all that stuff. She comes back to the people in town. He told me I’m a mess. Come and see.  

Who does that? There are a few. There’s a writer I enjoy, Mark Clark. He grew up an atheist. He did drugs as a kid. He stole. He got Tourettes and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. His dad was a deadbeat who died when he was 15. When he was 17 he said he believed in Jesus. He is one of the few guys I know of who gets up, and he can kind of smile and say, “I’m a mess. I’m a wreck. This guy Jesus told me about it. You should come and check him out.”  

Discover 

Last week was the gospel for the insider. The person who has their life all figured out, they just need to hear, look, as long as you think you don’t need life, you don’t have it.  

This week, the gospel for the outsider. The person who desperately searches for new life, tries drugs, or sex, or career, or marriage, and can’t find anything that will give them life.  

The question is just this: what gives you life? Where do you get meaning, satisfaction, and vitality for every day? What gives you life?  

What we need for life 

First thing to get here is what we need for life. Jesus says to this woman, “you would have asked and he would have given you living water”. In short he says, “I can give you living water.” (verse 10) 

This is a big deal. Water and air are our most basic physical needs. Without air a person dies in minutes. Without water they die in days. Water is so plentiful for us that we don’t even think about a world without water. One of my college classmates worked on a nonprofit that dug wells. About 10% of the world doesn’t have a basic drinking water source and almost 30% of the world drinks from a contaminated source. We’re blessed, kind of like this woman at the well, to have drinkable water. So Jesus is really talking to people like us when he says, “I can give you living water.”  

What does that mean? It means the most basic thing in life – water – can't really make you alive. It can’t give you life. You need something else to make you alive.  

If Jesus says, I can give you living water, what do you think are the odds that you have living money? Or a living marriage? Or a living career? What I mean is, if water the most basic thing in life is not really alive enough to give you life, what do you think is the chance that anything else physical actually gives you life?  

This has been a big struggle in my life because even if you think I’m a heady guy and I like ideas, I like physical stuff as much as any other guy. I have found it so hard to get my life and happiness from something other than physical circumstances. I remember one guy who asked, are you happy? I said, eh, I’m working on happiness apart from circumstances. He said, good, that’ll help. Tough, but it’ll help. Just the other day someone asked, is that part of life “life giving”? I said, “eh”. I still have a ways to go.  

Let me ask you: 

Is there something physical you are looking to for life? Yes No  

If so, what is it?  

Here is our first takeaway for today if you’re following along. The ______________ __________ (physical stuff) of life cannot give life.  

Where it is  

This is just the beginning. Jesus wants to make an even stronger point. He says, “the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (verse 14)  

This is another stunning point. Remember in the ancient world people basically denied their feelings. They said, the mind is everything. Control your feelings. Control what comes from within. In the modern world, we say almost the opposite. Just notice how people talk. We say, “I feel that we should do blah blah blah.” That’s probably not even correct. What they mean is, I think. Pretty much everything is about what we feel. Jesus says, I can give you something that will fill you on the inside. It’s not thinking or feeling that is right.  

Your entire thinking, your feeling, and even down to the very convictions of your life can be filled with a vitality, a liveliness. I think in my own life there are a few people who have been so filled with life that is just dynamic. It’s flowing over. And it doesn’t come from outside them.  

One of my favorites is my grandma …. knee surgery …. moving …. husband has heart failure and surgery …. Life is no longer flowing to them. It’s flowing from them. What he is showing her, and us... 

Everyone’s life has to flow out of something. Some people get life from physical things. They know who they are from the stuff they have. They know what groups they belong to from the things they own. They know where they are going from the things they want to have. If you say to yourself, “my goal right now is life to have a cabin by the lake” what is that? That’s a goal that’s filling you with life.  

And some people don’t even need physical things. I think I’ve told you about the famous comments from Bruce Becker before. The great tennis star Bruce Becker had everything, but for him it wasn’t about the possessions. It was the drive to be the best. “I had won Wimbledon twice, once as the youngest player. I was rich. . . . I had all the material possessions I needed.” But even that drive isn’t life giving. It won’t fill you with life. He went on to say,  

“It is the old song of movie stars and pop stars who commit suicide. They have everything, and yet they are so unhappy. I had no inner peace.” See, Jesus isn’t saying, you can’t have an identity. He isn’t saying you can’t have a sense of belonging. He isn’t saying you can’t have goals and purposes. He is simply saying those things can’t drive your life. Something else has to drive you and fill you with life.  

What’s driving you and filling you with life? _______________ Think about that a little. Maybe like Becker, it’s not even really the physical stuff. Maybe it’s the drive to be the best.  

Everyone needs something _____________(inside) filling them with life.  

Part 3 

There is a neat illustration someone else came up with for this source of life.  

Imagine a man wandering through a desert with bottles of water on his shoulder. He conserves his water careful until it is all gone and then he begins to get thirsty. That thirst gets deeper and deeper until he sees a pump and runs to it. He lifts the handle and pulls it down but all he hears is the sound of metal on metal. He starts to panic. Then he sees a tin can at the bottom of the pump and in the tin can is a message. “Dear traveller do not despair there is enough water here, just follow the instructions. Lift the handle of the pump, bring it down and when you hear the sound of metal on metal discouraging you here’s what you do. Under the pump in front of you there is buried under the sand a bottle of water. Do not despair. Pick up the bottle of water pour it into the cylinder and start priming the pump. The moisture will get the system to work. A rush of water will start gushing out of the pump. You can drink all of the water you want, fill all your bottles but do not forget to fill up the bottle again and leave it for the next passerby. Warning: you’re going to be tempted, when you see this one bottle of water, to drink it. But you’ll be so thirsty again and so will everyone else who goes by. Empty it out as instructed and you will have all the water you want and so will everybody else going by”…. 

When you come up against Christ he offers you that drink, that living water to free you from all your sin and give you life that lasts forever. If you take the littler water of your own life and pour it out on yourself you will soon be thirsty again and so will everybody else who comes across your path. But if you draw from the deep well of God, you will never run out of water.  

But you have to ask, who filled the water bottle first? Where did that water first come from?   

It was because Jesus was thirsty. It was because the divine Son of God, the maker of heaven and earth, had emptied himself of his glory and descended into the world as a vulnerable mortal, subject to becoming weary and thirsty. In other words, she found the living water because Jesus Christ said, “I thirst.” That is not the last time Jesus Christ said, “I thirst,” in the book of John. 

On the cross just before he died, he said, “I thirst,” and he meant more than just physical thirst. There Jesus was experiencing the loss of the relationship with his father because he was taking the punishment we deserved for our sins. There he was cut off from the Father, the source of living water. He was experiencing the ultimate, torturous, killing, eternal thirst of which the worst death by dehydration is just a hint. That is both paradoxical and astonishing. It is because Jesus Christ experienced cosmic thirst on the cross that you and I can have our spiritual thirst satisfied. 

Live for what gives life. Everyone lives for something. Are you living for what really gives life in the end? Live for what gives life