Who is thirsty and for what? (John 4)

Another great surprise of this passage is that it seems Jesus is the thirsty one (vv6-7), but it turns out that the Samaritan woman is really the thirsty one!

Initially, Jesus asks her for a drink

But then:

V10 - 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."

Jesus has a secret abundant supply of living water.

The woman misunderstands:

Vv11-12: "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 flocks and herds?"

Jesus is far greater than Jacob.

Drink from Jacob’s well and you’ll be back again in a few hours.

Drink from Jesus and you’ll be a spring of living water for others.

V13 - Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

The woman is a fountain of life for the Samaritan townspeople.

She overflows with who Jesus is.

Sinful and weak as we are, if we are trusting in Christ, we can bring spiritual life to others

This Samaritan woman becomes a great evangelist!

v39 - "Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony"

Our insatiable thirst – not only physically but spiritually

We are all thirsty

Jeremiah 2:13 - "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

 – what is your broken cistern, your cracked well, your leaky bucket?

Where do you look for identity, meaning, security, satisfaction, fullness?

My life would be fine, if...

I'd be okay so long as...

For this woman perhaps men

Mr Right – who always turned out to be Mr Wrong

Sex, relationships

Maybe for you its: Money, work, alcohol, drugs, family, power / influence, false religion, good works

Famous journalist: Malcolm Muggeridge:

"I may, I suppose, regard myself, or pass for being, a relatively successful man.

People occasionally stare at me in the streets—that's fame.

I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Inland Revenue—that's success.

Furnished with money and a little fame even the elderly, if they care to, may partake of trendy diversions—that's pleasure.

It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time—that's fulfilment.

Yet I say to you, and I beg you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing—less than nothing, a positive impediment—measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are.

What, I ask myself, does life hold, what is there in the works of time, in the past, now and to come, which could possibly be put in the balance against the refreshment of drinking that water?"

Its as if we try to satisfy our thirst with salt water, with things that only make us more thirsty we deadened our spiritual taste buds but never satisfy our thirst

Life dry and empty without Jesus

Jesus is the only fountain of living waters, nothing else can satisfy

Jesus offers us everything we could ever need.

Living water: refreshment, satisfaction,

Life – die very quickly without water – hot country without a constant supply of water in a tap

“(eternal) life”, v13,

10:10 – full, abundant life,

Cleansing

Spirit, John 7:37-39

“On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. ³⁸ Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." ³⁹ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.”

Even as a believer, are you longing for God?

the Psalmist says (Ps 42:1-2):

“As the deer pants for streams of water,

So my soul pants for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

Where can I go and meet with God?”

A free gift, v10 – just ask Jesus

Jesus thirsts, v7,

“I thirst” - 19:28,

Ps 22:14-15,

Jesus is made thirsty so that we can drink

water flows from Jesus’ side, 19:34 – more than a coroner’s report

Fountains of living water welling up from him.