The Lord has spared us another day, that we might know a little bit and discover some of the possibilities of our union with Him. Bless the Lord.
As we come to look in God’s Word, I remind my own heart, and I want to remind you, of that principle of Bible study that is absolutely indispensable.
Our Bible is like our Lord Jesus: it is human and divine. There are two sides. Just like when our Lord walked on the earth, most people saw only the human side: “This is the son of Joseph. This is the son of Mary. We know His brothers. We know where He was brought up. He is from Nazareth. We know about Him.”
And when God opened Peter’s eyes and he saw the other side—“Thou art the Christ”—our Lord Jesus said, “Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father in heaven.”
When He was on the earth, to see the divine side of the living Word, there needed to be a revelation of the Holy Spirit. And now we have the written Word, and there are two sides. There is a human side, and so we have to study, and we have to read, and we have the academics.
But there is also a divine side, and only God can reveal God. At the end of the day, we come as little children before the Lord, and we say, “Lord, as far as I know, I have done the academics. I have done the human side. Now unveil the Lord Jesus to my heart.”
And He delights to do that. He has given us His Word that we might know Him.
Before we pray together, let me share this verse from Psalm 36. Psalm 36:8:
They drink their fill of the abundance of Thy house;
And Thou makest them drink of the river of Thy pleasures.
For with Thee is the fountain of life:
In Thy light shall we see light.
“They drink their fill.” That has to do with capacity, because your fill might be bigger than my fill, and someone else’s fill might be bigger than both of our fills. But they all drink their fill, according to their capacity.
He knows that there is more that we cannot bear, and He will not give us that. But His revelation always waits on our capacity, and as much as we are willing to receive, He is willing to give. So He is delighted to do that.
Let us bow together and commit our time to Him, and pray that He will indeed unveil the Lord Jesus to our hearts.
Our Father, we thank You again this morning for these great truths: that You have not left us on our own as we come to this precious Book, Your inspired Word. You have given us Your life. You have given us the Holy Spirit, the indwelling Bible Teacher, who can turn the light on and put our Lord Jesus in the light, and then grace us to walk in the light as He is in the light.
Lord, we pray that every brother this morning might drink their fill of Your abundance. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I will ask you to open your Bibles, please, to John 4. Let me get before your heart once again, by way of a little review, what is on my heart to share. We will be mostly in the Gospel of John. Tomorrow morning, there is another passage that I want to open in connection with John 4.
But let us look at the two verses that are sort of key verses. The first is from John 4:13-14:
Jesus answered and said to her, Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again:
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst;
But the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life.
I want you to notice especially that little phrase, “in him,” because this first aspect of Christ as the living water has to do with the promise that He will be in us a fountain, a well springing up into eternal life.
Hold that, and look please at John 7:37-39:
Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.
He that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.
But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believed on Him were to receive: for the Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified.
I suggested that, in several ways, but at least in this way, John 7 is an advance on John 4. The promise in John 4 is that He would be a fountain, a spring in me springing up into eternal life.
The promise in John 7 is that that same life which has bubbled in me will now flow through me as rivers—plural—raging torrents of living water, because there is a thirsty world out there.
The bottom line of God’s heart is that He has a worldwide heart. All truth is missionary truth. All truth is redemptive. God works in us in order to work through us, that that living water might go to the ends of the earth.
So that is what we want to look at together. What does it mean that He is a fountain in me, springing up to eternal life? What does it mean that He is raging torrents through me, pouring out to others who are thirsty? Hopefully, by the end, we will have answered those questions.
Now, it is God’s purpose for us in Christ Jesus that both aspects of that are true in my life. And what is true for the individual always has application for the body.
It is God’s will that Christ—the life of Christ in the person of the Holy Spirit—the life of the Lord Jesus, bubble in you and fill you and quench your thirst. That is God’s will.
It is also God’s will for us, individually and corporately, that we be that channel of redemption to the world, and that the life of the Lord Jesus flow out through us, individually and corporately.
As we said last night, I hope we are all on the same page: we are talking about that thirst that is from and not for. What we mean by that is, the Lord Jesus has already satisfied us. He has already come into our heart. The well is already there. We do not have to look for the stream. We do not have to look for the fountain. It is already there.
I want to begin there, because when He speaks of that bubbling fountain within, and when He speaks of that raging river through, He is talking about an outworking of our union with the Lord Jesus Christ.
I am convinced, as I suggested last night, that the enemy of our souls would love us to make a goal out of a starting point. And if he cannot do that, then he will try to turn our eyes to by-products rather than to the goal. He is constantly doing that.
I know it sounds spiritual to think off in the future: someday, down the road, by and by, someday I will find that I am complete in Him. Someday, that rest that Christians talk about, I will enter into that. I can see the day coming when I will be filled with the Spirit of God.
And when I am totally consecrated, totally surrendered, crucified, dead to self—boy, I cannot wait for that day to come. But it is always out in the future. It is always down the road. Maybe someday we are going to move into that when we talk about those things.
But we have got to begin here, brothers. It is not down the road. It is now. Christ is in your heart. You are a believer in Christ. And when He came in, He came in as a fountain to bubble. That is why He is there. He has come in to do that.
Christ lives in you. You are complete in Christ. You have been crucified with Christ. These things are reality. Your life is hidden with Christ in God. You have been raised up with Him in heavenly places.
From that position, may God create in us a thirst and appetite to know more of that and to enter more fully into that. We are not reaching for the hour when we have a bubbling spring. That is the starting point. You have a bubbling spring.
May God enable us to pull out all the stops and to believe that with all our hearts, because then we are going to experience it. Once you recognize, then you can realize; but you cannot realize first. You have to recognize.
It is objectively true. What Christ has made objectively true by His death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit makes subjectively real when you take it by the simple step of faith. So do not run after the reality: “Oh, Lord, I want it to be real.” Know what is true, and God will make it real.
Having said that, let us look at this precious story in John 4 and illustrate some of these wonderful life principles.
I am sure that if you come, just sort of la-la-la, to John 4, these first forty-two verses, you say, “This woman at the well is a wonderful illustration of somebody coming to Jesus for the first time.” In other words, she illustrates how to get saved, how to come to the Lord Jesus for the first time.
Here is a picture of a sinner finding salvation and taking the first drink, and coming to a relationship with Christ.
I think all of us—we would not be here, I do not believe, if we had not had that first drink. I am assuming that we are all here knowing the Lord. I told you last night, for me it was many years ago, 1958, in Hartford, Connecticut, when the Lord discovered Himself to me. What a glory.
Sometimes I get discouraged. I think, “Fifty years—should I not be further down the road?” I look at my own heart and just sort of wonder sometimes. But for others it might not have been fifty years—maybe thirty years, or twenty years, or younger than that.
One of the things that blesses my heart is seeing you young men here. Praise God you come to a conference like this. This is not for old men in nursing homes. Praise God, it is for them too. But, oh, if God can get you young, give yourself early to the Lord. He will save your life as well as your soul.
Praise God for these young people who are here. But anyway, no doubt this story illustrates the first draft, the first drink, the first sip. Yet though this story illustrates that, it goes beyond that.
This is all the eggs in one basket. Look at John 4:10:
Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and Who it is that saith to thee, Give Me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.
Certainly, that is coming to Christ for the first time. But then our verses, John 4:13-14:
Jesus answered and said unto her, Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again:
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst;
But the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life.
His invitation goes beyond that first sip, beyond that first drink, and takes her all the way to the well within—the fountain bubbling up into eternal life. So it is more than getting saved. It is coming to the place where you experience the fullness of that fountain.
But it does not stop there. The sequel of this story is as wonderful as the beginning. Look please at John 4:28-30:
So the woman left her waterpot, and went away into the city, and saith to the men,
Come, see a man, Who told me all things that ever I did: can this be the Christ?
They went out of the city, and were coming to Him.
See her dump her waterpot and run into the city. What was the result of that? Listen to what Jesus told His disciples in John 4:35:
Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest?
Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, that they are white already unto harvest.
We are going to pick up that particular point in another connection later on. It is possible, when Jesus said, “There are four months, then comes the harvest,” that some commentators think that is literal. In other words, they were four months from the harvest. Maybe they were in February, because then they would have the spring harvest in early June.
Or maybe, when He was speaking to her, it was June or early July, and He was talking about the fall harvest. “Lift up your eyes. The harvest is coming.”
Some take that expression, “Four months and then comes the harvest,” as a proverb—a saying that was going around at that time. That is possible.
We do that when somebody dies. Somebody shares with me that a saint has died, and I know that saint. Almost always, I will respond in these words: “A few hours and we will all be there.” Well, that is a figure of speech. It might be a few hours. That might be literal. It might be a few minutes. I do not know. But when I say, “A few hours and we will all be there,” I just mean a short time.
So when Jesus said, “You say, ‘There are four months, then comes the harvest,’” some think “you say” means that was a saying at that time. That is what you say: “Four months and then comes the harvest.”
Some take it this way, and it is possible: at that time, since the woman had gone into the city, the Samaritans were now coming to where Jesus was at the well. The Samaritans, according to those I have read, were white-robed. They had a white wrap around their head.
Some would suggest that Jesus said to His disciples, “Look over there.” Here comes a great group of Samaritans with their heads bobbing, and it looked like a wheat field. He just said, “Now here comes the harvest.” It could be something like that. I incline, perhaps, that it might have been something like that.
But the point I am making is this: how far this story goes. Yes, it is the first drink. But it goes to the place where the fountain is rising up in the heart. Then there is the overflow. It even shows you these rivers going out.
John 4:39-42:
And from that city many of the Samaritans believed on Him because of the word of the woman, who testified, He told me all things that ever I did.
So when the Samaritans came unto Him, they besought Him to abide with them: and He abode there two days.
And many more believed because of His word;
And they said to the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy speaking: for we have heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world.
Even if you do not stop there, how many people will be in heaven because of John 4? How this woman’s life became a channel of redemption. Tens of thousands of people will probably be in heaven because raging rivers of living water came through this woman.
It is the first sip indeed, but it is a story that tells you also about the bubbling fountain within. It is also a story that tells you about the raging rivers of life that go through and bring a wonderful, wonderful harvest.
Usually, we think, “If you can get that far—here is a Christian who has Christ, His life, as a bubbling fountain within, and he does not thirst—wow, I wish someday I could be that Christian.”
That just sounds like one of the spiritual hotshots. Somebody talks about having raging rivers, plural, of water coming through my life. “No, I am not a missionary. I am not a speaker. I am not a teacher. I am just everyday average, and that cannot happen to me.”
“That belongs to the deeper-life folks. Somebody has got to know Hebrew in order to have that, or know Greek or Aramaic or something like that. I can see the first part. The woman is a picture of a sinner, and Jesus came to that sinner and offered living water. I can go that far.”
But somehow we feel like this other part is for the elite, for special people, for deeper-life Christians, those who are real spiritual. “I will never be that.”
Brothers in Christ, the indwelling life of Christ is for every Christian.
Now, as I develop this this morning, you are the woman. This morning, I am the woman. We are going to look at that. Every Christian has the life of Christ—every Christian.
The most spiritual Christian has Christ in his life. I am not encouraging this, but the most carnal Christian has Christ in his life. The smartest Christian has Christ in his life. The dumbest Christian has Christ in his life. The sharpest Christian has Christ in his life. The dullest Christian has Christ in his life.
We have got to begin there. It is not far away. This is not just for Andrew Murray and Hudson Taylor and Spurgeon and Austin-Sparks and Watchman Nee and some of these big names. This is for every believer. It is for you. It is for me.
I used to teach that all Christians have life, but not all Christians have abundant life. Boy, I do not teach that anymore. I do not teach that, and I will tell you why I do not teach that: because life is a Person.
All Christians have life. Abundant life is also a Person. It is Christ. All Christians have abundant life. Now, they are not all drinking their fill. That is another story altogether. But we all have the Lord Jesus.
Every one of us, we are the woman of Samaria. So what is going to be true of her now, as we take these principles, is true of every believer.
As I was learning some of the ways of the Lord, there were bumpy roads and dark ways. We wondered if that thing would ever break on us. Others were testifying about it, and you are over there saying, “How come He passes me by? Why do I not enter into some of this fullness?”
I remember going through some of those struggles. Do you realize this? It is no more difficult to live content in Jesus than it was to get saved in the first place. It is the same faith. The faith for salvation is the faith for victory.
As you received Christ, so walk in Him. It is exactly the same faith. You say, “I have faith to get saved, but I do not have enough faith to live in victory over indwelling corruption.” That is nonsense.
Once you learn what it means that that fountain bubbles, you will have all of that victory that you want.
All right, let us come then to this first part. Our Lord Jesus is the living water, of course, in this passage, and He talks about coming inside in order to be a fountain of living water.
I want to look this morning, just to introduce it—tonight we will develop it more—at this first part: What does it mean that Christ comes in as a fountain in order to bubble up in my life?
I am going to lay the foundation this morning, and tonight, God helping us and assisting us, we are going to unfold what it means to have Christ as the fountain in my heart. Everybody in this room is this woman.
I want to show the foundations now. How did the Lord meet and satisfy this woman’s thirst? There is nothing deep this morning. It is so simple. Everything is on the surface. May God burn it into our hearts.
I want you to notice, first of all, in this story, that our Lord Jesus initiated everything. That is right on the top, but, oh, how basic, how cardinal, how important it is. Our Lord Jesus is the Initiator.
In other words, what we are saying is, it is all by grace. He is the One who did it. She did not come to Him. He came to her. He sought her out.
John 4:9:
The Samaritan woman therefore saith unto Him, How is it that Thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, who am a Samaritan woman?
For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
I want to focus for a couple of moments on that last phrase, that parenthetical expression: “The Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.” In this story, I believe that is an illustration, and the reality is always greater than the thing that illustrates it.
When you are talking about Christ, the reality is infinitely greater. So the greater the picture, the greater the reality. This is a picture: the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans.
Now let us take that upstairs. I believe that in that story, outside of the part Christ played, the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritan. Apart from Christ, understand what I am saying, brothers: God has no dealings with us—none—apart from the Lord Jesus Christ.
The stronger you see the rift between the Samaritan and the Jew, then multiply that times infinity, and you know God should never have dealt with you. God should never have dealt with me. He should not have met us at the well. But He did. He did.
Outside of Christ, no dealings with us. So what I want to do is look at that illustration, just to show you how strong it was. Then may God show us the reality and how God deals with us in Christ Jesus. Our Lord plowed right through all of that prejudice and that separating wall.
I guess you are probably familiar with the history, but there are some here who may not be familiar with the history. We are all going to come together, and I will just pretend none of us know the history. We will start in simple words.
What was this rift? Why did the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans?
When you first read the record, it almost looks like the woman is Jewish. In John 4:12, she calls Jacob “our father.” In John 4:19, she calls Jesus a prophet. In John 4:20, she says, “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain.” In John 4:25, she talks about waiting for the Messiah: “When Messiah comes.”
She sounds Jewish, but she is not, and she knows it. In John 4:9, she says, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink, since I am a Samaritan woman? Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.”
She knew He was a Jew and she was a Samaritan. How did she know that? Some say maybe it was language—perhaps there was a dialect or a tone of voice. Some say maybe it was appearance. Did the Jews dress differently?
We know they wore white robes, and the Samaritans wore white robes, but we are told that the Samaritans had blue tassels on the bottom of their white robes, and the Jews had white tassels on the bottom of their white robes. Maybe she saw that. Perhaps there was some characteristic, maybe the cut of the beard, or a Jewish nose—who knows?
But I know she knew: “You are a Jew. I am a Samaritan.” She was shocked that He would have anything to do with her, or even talk to her.
The history goes back quite a few years. Actually, I think it began when Ahab and Jezebel built the first temple for Baal. They built it in Samaria.
But later, when God was judging Israel for her sins and used Assyria as His chastening rod, Samaria comes to the forefront again. The history for this is 2 Kings 17, and you can read those details.
It was a custom in those days, after a conquest, that the conquering nation would deport from the conquered land all the important people. They would take out the strongest of the military, all the artisans and craftsmen, and all the educated people.
That is why you read about Daniel and the three Hebrews, and Ezekiel being taken captive, because they were a little cut above; they were smarter and wiser. Then they left the common people—the farmer, the average people.
Then, so they would not build up again, they would send foreigners into that same area and sort of colonize it. That is what the Assyrians did.
There were some Jews left in Samaria. The Assyrians, according to 2 Kings 17, took a handful of Babylonians and a handful from another country that they had conquered, and put them all in Samaria.
So you had this melting pot of heathens and whatever was left over of the Jews. Of course, the heathen brought with them their idolatry and their religion. They served all kinds of gods. As you would expect, after a while there was intermarriage.
They were no longer pure Jews; now they were half-breeds, or less. Then they turned to idolatry.
Some of the Jews in captivity made a complaint and said, “Those Jews down there are being led astray by the heathens.” The Assyrians were being very nice, and they said, “All right, tell you what: we will send some priests down there. They will straighten them out.”
They sent some priests down there, and they began to tell them about the true God. What you ended up with is 2 Kings 17:33:
They feared the Lord, and served their own gods.
That is what it ended up as. It was a mixture. They feared the Lord and served their own gods.
Now they were not only half-breeds—Jews and Gentiles—but there was mixture. They were serving the true God, but He was not the one and only. He was one among many, and they had many gods.
That was bad enough, but the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back came in the days of Ezra, when they were rebuilding the temple.
The Samaritans heard about it, and they said, “We are Jews. Let us help you. We want a part in the temple because we are Jews.”
Ezra and the others did not know what to do, so they did what you are supposed to do: they called an elders’ meeting. All the elders got together, and they made a decision. Ezra 4:3:
But Zerubbabel, and Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers’ houses of Israel, said unto them, Ye have nothing to do with us in building a house unto our God.
They took a vote: no, you cannot help. Well, that did it. They were highly offended. “We are Jews, and now you are telling us we cannot build a temple?”
By the way, they did take some money from them, but they did not have a part in the building of the temple.
Josephus, the church historian, tells us they went off and built a rival temple. They said, “All right, we will build our own temple.” They went on Mount Gerizim. There is a story behind that, but I will not take the time.
They built their own. Such an action—that they would build a rival temple on a rival mountain rather than Mount Zion—was the same as treason against the true God.
The Jews wrote off the Samaritans as gross idolaters: heathens, against the Lord, never on God’s side. And the Samaritans had the same kind of opinion toward the Jews. They said, “These Jews are just proud and arrogant and self-righteous hypocrites. They think they are so spiritual that they can do it. We will have nothing to do with them.”
All of that is behind this little expression in John 4:9: “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” They did not have any dealings. That rift was very, very established and irrevocable.
The Samaritans went on to establish a religion of their own. They had their own temple. They had their own mountain. They needed priests, so they established their own priesthood.
They needed a Bible, so they said, “All right, we will take the first five books of the Jewish Bible—nothing more.” The Pentateuch became their Bible.
I cannot stress how deep this rift was between the Jews and the Samaritans. I do not think, in our country, with all of the prejudice that has been in our country, that it ever came as close, even at its worst, as “the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.”
The commentator Trapp tells us that if a Samaritan accidentally bumped into a Jew on the street, he would look for the closest body of water and jump in, clothes and all, just because he was contaminated. He would jump in just to get cleansed.
Edersheim says that if, even by accident, a Jew happened to eat a piece of bread baked by a Samaritan, he had to go through the same ceremonies as if he had eaten pork. You know how that was to the Jews because of this rift.
The greatest insult people could give to Jesus is given in John 8:48. The Pharisees got so angry with the Lord Jesus that they said:
Say we not well that Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a demon?
They could not come up with any worse things to say. They said to Jesus, “You are a Samaritan, and You are demon-possessed.” That was the highest insult they could give.
That is where James and John got their famous nickname, the Sons of Thunder. It is recorded in Luke 9. Jesus went through Samaria, and they rejected Him. James and John came to Jesus and said, “Do You want us to call fire out of heaven, and we will just fry them?” That is where they got their nickname, Sons of Thunder.
This Jew-Samaritan thing was so strong. Let me give you one other illustration of that division. If you look at a Bible map—I had to do this; Lillian helped me. I get lost, I am telling you, going through a swinging door. I am just constantly getting lost.
She pointed it out to me, and I traced this. If you were trying to go from Judea to Galilee and just went straight, you would have to go through Samaria.
But the prejudice was so great that, rather than doing that, the Jews would cross the Jordan River twice just to get around Samaria. They did not want to go to Samaria.
They would cross over at Perea, go north through Decapolis, then cross the Jordan River again and come into Galilee. They went all the way around it.
We are told that the most common route from Judea to Galilee was around Samaria, not straight through.
It is not only this woman who marveled that Jesus had anything to do with her. Remember when the disciples came back? They marveled too. Listen to John 4:27:
And upon this came His disciples; and they marvelled that He was speaking with a woman; yet no man said, What seekest Thou? or, Why speakest Thou with her?
She was not only a Samaritan. That shocked them. “He is talking to a half-breed.” But she was a woman. They had rules about women too.
Rabbis were forbidden to speak to women in a public place—not even their sister, not even their mother. They could not even talk to their wife in a public place.
This was a Samaritan, and He was talking. This was a woman, and He was talking. Add to that: she was a fallen woman of notorious character. She was an immoral woman.
It is very possible, if you look at John 4:6, that this is why she came to the well at the sixth hour.
If you have the New American Standard, it has a footnote in the margin. It says, if it was Roman time, the sixth hour was six o’clock at night. If it was Jewish time, then of course it was twelve o’clock in the afternoon.
There are big arguments: does John use Roman time, or does John use Jewish time? Some would say, because of John 19, it has the same expression, “the sixth hour,” and Pilate took Jesus at the sixth hour and brought Him to the Jews. We know that was in the morning, so they say, “See? Roman time.”
Well, I think there is an explanation. I do not want to get into it now. I think there is an explanation for that one verse, but it would surprise me if John used Roman time when Matthew, Mark, and Luke always use Jewish time.
When you see what happens after this, she drops her bucket, runs to Samaria, talks to the men, they come back, and He says, “Lift up your eyes. The fields are white.” There would not have been time if it were six o’clock at night. They would look up at the field, but they would not be white. You would not be able to see the field. It would be dark.
Anyway, I believe it was Jewish time. The point is, the fact that this woman was alone at the well tells me that she came at an unusual time. Most commentators believe that she came at high noon.
The other women, according to Genesis, would come to the well in the cool of the evening. It was a time for women to gossip, fellowship, and talk—women talk, and all that kind of thing. But she did not come at that time.
There is a good possibility it was because she was an outcast. She was a fallen woman, trying, I think, to avoid the scornful looks and the talk: “There is that woman,” and so on. She was an untouchable.
Evidently—I am just reading this in, but I am assuming—she probably was a little bit older. I do not know, though. Looking at Hollywood, they go through husbands pretty quick, so maybe she was not older. I do not know.
But it seems to me that the springtime of her life was over, and certainly by this time her affections were worn out. Boy, when you read this story, if you enter into it, her character was destroyed.
Five men had come into her life at one time or another and had broken her heart. We do not know all the details; God does not tell us. But I am sure they came in and played with her affections, and her heart was broken many, many times. Now a sixth man was doing the same thing.
They were living in an adulterous relationship when Jesus talked to this woman. I am suggesting to you, brothers, that that whole story—that woman—tells the story of a sinner who is alone, who has messed up terribly, who is broken, who is hard, who is disillusioned, very discontent, shunned, and avoided.
People are crossing over a river just not to have contact with her. They have no dealings with her. This is the sinner on the street of any town. This is you. This is me. We are this woman.
By all rights, the Lord should have no dealings with us—none whatsoever.
But what do we find? Look at John 4:4:
And He must needs pass through Samaria.
I like the way the King James says it: “He must needs pass through Samaria.” He must needs pass through. So I ask the question: why must He?
It was not a geographical necessity. That was not the route they took. They went wrong, so it was not a geographical necessity.
I read this wonderful quote from C. I. Scofield of the Scofield Bible. He said God the Father had made an appointment in eternity past with God the Son to speak to this Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar.
That is why He must needs pass through Samaria. He was keeping the appointment made by God the Father in eternity past.
It is wonderful to realize that Jesus thirsted for this woman before this woman ever knew she had a thirst for the Lord Jesus. He is the Initiator. Christ knew about her—all about her. You know that from reading the story. He is the Initiator.
In the natural world, thirst seeks for water. That is how it works. You are thirsty, and you try to find a drink.
In the spiritual world, water seeks for thirst. Such a glorious thing: you did not seek the Lord first. He sought you. He came after you.
He must needs pass through Samaria, and the water was on the hunt for the thirst. That is what you see here.
If this story teaches anything, it teaches that although God should have, by right, being a holy God, no dealings with us, in Christ the opposite is true. He seeks us out.
The Bible presents nineteen different personal interviews of our Lord Jesus with individuals. That is a wonderful study. But of all the interviews, I think none excite my soul as much as this interview with this woman of Samaria.
The Lord Jesus sat on the stones of Jacob’s well, which was dug two thousand years before, in conversation with this lonely woman, this thirsty woman. It touches me because I know my life, and I know her life by reading. She was burned out by passion.
The Lord Jesus came by and sat on that well. I remember that day in my life when the greatest Person in the universe did not avoid me, did not try to skirt around, and did not try to get on the opposite side of the street.
You probably have had that experience. I have done it, and I have had it done to me. Sometimes we see somebody coming and think, “Oh boy, no, no, not them. I do not want to talk to them.” We just sort of skirt around.
Maybe they are odd, maybe they are backward. There is one dear guy, but he stands too close when he talks, and he has bad breath. I just do not want to talk to him.
Some are sort of repulsive. There is another one who keeps seeking me out, and he has social disease. My heart goes out, and yet I find myself trying to duck down when he is in the room or coming by. I do not want to talk to him.
Some are loud, some are boisterous, and some are talkative. I know if I get caught, I am dead for the next forty-five minutes. That person is going to keep yapping, yapping, yapping, and I am going to have to hear it.
Or else they make me feel guilty: “How come you did not come to the meeting? Weren’t you supposed to contact someone?” I feel guilty. Or maybe I owe them money, and I just try to duck away. You know what I am saying? We are always trying to avoid one another.
I see the Lord Jesus, and He is not doing that to me. I am sure spiritually I have bad breath, body odor, and I am an untouchable. He should go all the way around. But, brothers, He does not do it.
I see somebody coming down a certain aisle in the grocery store—the cereal aisle—and I go to the dog-food aisle, just sort of hoping. Jesus never ducks for cover when He sees you coming. Jesus never ducks for cover when He sees me coming.
The fact is, He will sit down right in the path He knows you will take because He wants a private conversation with you about living water. He never avoids Samaria. He must go through Samaria.
Before Christ, God had no dealings with me—none, zero, zilch. Now all of God’s dealings with me are through Christ, and all of God’s dealings with you are through Christ.
We deserve for Him, brothers, to pass all the way around us and have nothing to do with us.
I am sure when that woman woke up that morning, she did not have a clue where that day was going. She did not have the slightest idea. She got up like every day. She brushed her teeth, had breakfast, did some chores, and got to the well before the other women so she could get back.
She had no idea that her destiny was going to be determined that day. She had no idea when she woke up that someday she was going to be a channel of redemption, where tens of thousands of people would live forever in the presence of the Lord. She had no idea about that.
Jesus initiates. Brothers, it is possible that there is somebody in this room like her. You woke up this morning, and you do not have a clue what God is planning for you this day. I do not have a clue what God is planning for me this day.
It is possible that the Lord has seen you come to this well, and He is present to have a private conversation with you about living water that will change your life forever.
He wants to talk about His dealings with you. The Lord will never avoid you. The Lord will seek you out. He will never duck behind a counter when He sees you coming.
The shock that woman had when Jesus started to speak to her is a tiny little illustration of how shocked we should be that God would have anything to do with us.
If I could choose, I would not have anything to do with me. Yet He does.
That day, there were really only two people in this story: the Lord Jesus and that needy woman. I do not know how many brothers are here, but the reality is, there are really only two. There are only two. It is you and Jesus. That is who is here.
I am not saying that to make you feel important. I am saying that because you are important. You are important to our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is very possible that God the Father, in eternity past, made an appointment with God the Son for this very weekend: to sit down and have a private chat with you. Are you ready for that?
This woman had no clue about that.
Before I close, I want to call attention to one more thing. John 4:23:
But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth:
For such doth the Father seek to be His worshippers.
God not only initiates. He comes to our well. He does not skirt around us. He initiates, but then He invites us.
John 4:10:
If thou knewest the gift of God, and Who it is that saith to thee, Give Me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.
What He is saying is, “I have something, and it is yours for the asking. If you would ask, I would give.” This is another indication of His infinite willingness to receive sinners.
Some have confused John 4:7:
There came a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give Me to drink.
Why did Jesus ask for a drink? Some say—and I am sort of shocked that some of my commentaries say this, some good names; I will not malign them—they say He was using psychology in order to be evangelistic, to open the door.
They say He was trying to put her at ease and put her in debt. If she gave Him something, then she sort of owed a listen. He did not use psychology. His thirst was real. He asked for a drink because He was thirsty. He is human. He was thirsty. It is not psychology.
One of my commentators goes into all of this: Abraham was a pilgrim, so God came to him as a pilgrim. Joshua was a military man, so Jesus came to him as a man with a sword in His hand. Peter was a fisherman, so He said, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
This woman was at the well, so He said, “I am the living water,” as if He were trying to find a point of interest. That is what I was taught in my evangelism class: find a point of interest. Do they have kids? Grandkids? Do they like art? What about their motorcycle? Get a point of interest, then weave Jesus in on the side.
That is not how He does evangelism. He is not trying to open a door and find an opportunity to weave Jesus in on the side. That is not at all what He is doing.
He asked her for a drink. Get this, because it contains a principle: He asked her for a drink because He wanted her to ask Him for a drink.
That is not just a fact. Yes, He was thirsty, but it is deeper than that. It is a Bible principle: He asks you for what He wants you to ask Him for.
In fact, it is imperative. He said, “Give Me a drink.” He did not really ask; it is a command. “Give Me a drink.” He commands because He is inviting.
Do you realize this, brothers? Every command in the Bible is an invitation. Every time God commands you to do something, He wants you to ask Him to give you the very thing that He is asking for.
All His commands are invitations. It does not take you long to go on in the Christian life and realize that it is not in you to obey God. I mean, it is because you have Christ, but in yourself, you cannot obey God.
Everything God has ever commanded in this Book is impossible to fulfill. He commands so you can ask Him for the very thing that He has commanded you.
I promise you, if you do not understand that, you will never walk in obedience. We want to walk in obedience. But while you try to obey God, you are clogging the well.
We are talking about the water, the life of God, that enables, that bubbles up, that allows you to obey the Lord.
When He commands you to love Him, I will tell you how to obey that. You say, “Lord, give me the love to love You.”
“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself up for it.” You do not have that in you, and you had better go to the Lord and say, “Lord, You give what You command, and then command anything You want to command.”
That is what He is doing here. He is the One who is thirsty, and He is thirsty to provide her need for thirst.
Notice how quickly He responded in John 4:25-26:
The woman saith unto Him, I know that Messiah cometh, He that is called Christ: when He is come, He will declare unto us all things.
Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am He.
As soon as she asks, He identifies Himself. Do you realize this? This is such an amazing thing. This is the clearest avowal of His nature and office in the whole Gospel record.
He comes right out and says, “I am Messiah.” He did not say that to the Pharisees. He did not say that to the scribes. He did not say that to the priests. But to this woman at the well, as soon as she asks, He is right there and proclaims Himself.
He is anxious to make Himself known to sinners of the deepest dye, and she is an illustration of that.
In the Old Testament, He did the same thing. Many, many times—seventeen times in the Old Testament—our Lord Jesus appeared as the angel of the Lord.
Do you know the first time He ever appeared as the angel of the Lord? It was also to a woman at a well. Hagar, exactly right. Hagar.
She was a literal slave. In the New Testament, this is a spiritual slave who needs to be set free.
The point is this: I have only really said two things this morning. He initiates, and He invites. That is all I said. I used a lot of words to say it, and I hope I did not cloud the way.
We do not deserve it, but He seeks us out. Then He invites us to drink of this living water.
I felt I had to start here before we started talking about the bubbling well, because it is all by grace. We do not deserve anything, and it is all by invitation. It is His desire.
Let me ask this question: Did our Lord Jesus ever get His drink?
Listen to John 4:31-34:
In the mean while the disciples prayed Him, saying, Rabbi, eat.
But He said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not.
The disciples therefore said one to another, Hath any man brought Him aught to eat?
Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to accomplish His work.
Why did Jesus say, “Give Me a drink”? Because He wanted her to say, “Give me a drink.” When she said it, He got His drink.
Brothers, I do not know what is going on in your heart and your life. I know only these big things: the Lord has come into your life to be a bubbling spring in you and to be raging rivers through you. I know that is one hundred percent true.
But I also know from my own life that there can be resistance to this. I do not have to say yes. He will not force it. He does not strong-arm anybody.
It is not about you, and it is not about me.
The Lord Jesus is thirsty this weekend. The Lord Jesus is thirsty.
You say, “Why should I surrender totally to the Lord?” You say, “Well, it is going to change your life.” Yes, that is true.
“It is going to affect your family.” No doubt about it. “It is going to affect those precious kids.” Yes. But that is not why you should surrender to Jesus.
“It is going to make my boss happy.” Probably. But that is not why you should surrender to Jesus. “It is going to affect my neighborhood.” Maybe it will. But that is not why.
Do you know why you should surrender totally to the Lord Jesus? Because it is God’s will for your life.
It is not about you. It is not about your thirst. It is about Him. It is about His thirst. It is God’s will for you to give everything over to the Lord Jesus.
Like this woman, if you say yes, His thirst is satisfied. “I have meat to eat that you know not of.” I have been satisfied because I had the privilege to satisfy You.
So we will close there. Two things only that we looked at this morning: our Lord Jesus initiates. He should have gone around us. He should have had nothing to do with us. But instead, He kept the appointment made in eternity past.
He sat on the well. He knew we would come by. We did not even know we were thirsty. He met us.
He did not jam it into us. He invited us. “If you ask of Me, I will give you living water.” If you say yes, you bless His heart. It is about His heart. Let us bless Him this weekend. Let us pray.
Father, thank You so much for Your precious Word. Thank You for not hiding Yourself and ducking out of the way when we came by, but instead planting Yourself in our path so we could meet You and have a conversation about the living water.
Lord, meet us this weekend, we pray, that we might know, in all that You have inspired it to mean, what it means to have a well of water springing up in us and raging rivers flowing through us.
Do that for us, we pray, for the sake of our Lord Jesus and to satisfy His heart. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.