Thirsty?

In creating this message for my readers, I am hoping this message will quench your thirst for Jesus in your life as well as it has for me.  I always talk about a favorite Pastor of mine, James MacDonald because he consistently delivers valuable and clear messages of salvation and hope for me.  His teachings lately are from the book of John.  This message is from his series "Authentic Revelation." 

Revealed as: Water for the Thirsty
1A) Examining the text of John 4:1-4 The Pharisees(These people were known for comparing themselves to each other.) heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more followers than John, 2 although Jesus himself did not baptize people, but his followers did. 3 Jesus knew that the Pharisees had heard about him, so he left Judea and went back to Galilee. 4 But on the way he had to go through the country of Samaria.

Christ decided to go straight through the middle instead of around, like going through the hood.  Samaritans were not friends with the Jews.  They even had racism back in Jesus' days.  God forgive those with racism.  John uses the words "had to" repeatedly in this chapter.  This verb John used to demonstrate Jesus' submission of his will to the father.  He "had to" pass through Samaria to get to Galilee.  On his way through Jesus stopped at Jacob's well to have a drink of water.  At the well was a Samaritan woman, whom Jesus asked to get him some water from the well.  It was very uncommon for a Man to speak to a woman, especially a Jewish Rabbi speaking to a Samaritan woman.  The woman was surprised he was speaking to her.  Jesus said to her, "If you only knew the free gift of God and who it is that is asking you for water, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."  She thought he was referring to a better quality of water, like running stream, a tap to her home.  Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give will never be thirsty."  The water Jesus will give will give eternal life.  But she still doesn't get it.  She is so caught up in the physical she can't get the spiritual reality.

2A) Extracting the Principles
    1b) Jesus wants to satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart.  He wants to satisfy the deepest longings of your life.  Jesus IS the living water, as he gives himself. 

Ecclesiastes 3:1There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:² a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,³ a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,⁶a time to search and a time to give up,a time to keep and a time to throw away,⁷a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,⁸a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.⁹What do workers gain from their toil? ¹⁰ I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. ¹¹He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet  no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. ¹² I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. ¹³That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. ¹⁴ I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him. 

People try a lot of things to fill the thirst in their soul that only Christ can quench.  Substance, alcohol, drugs(legal and illegal), relationships, food...  Your life will be over setting yourself up to enjoy what only Christ can give.  Blaise Pascal said those words.  He was a genius of a man that lived very long ago.  He was a child prodigy and Christian philosopher, among many other things. He invented many things that we take for granted today.  Many darkened minds and hearts view the faith in God as the invention of weak minds.  He had one of the greatest minds in history and had faith in God.  When he died he had a note he wrote pinned onto the inside of his jacket.

 

"The year of grace 1654
Monday, 23 November . . .From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight
FIRE. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob - Not the God of the philosophers and of the learned. Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace. God of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except God.
He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul. Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
Let me not be separated from him forever. May I never forget his words. Amen.” 

In the end Pascal concluded,
Since the present age never satisfies us, experience tricks us and leads us from misfortune to misfortune until death. What then does this craving and inability cry to us if not that there was once a true happiness in man of which there now remains only the mark and empty trace? We try mainly to fill it with everything around us, seeking from things absent, the help that we do not receive from things present, but they are all inadequate because only an infinite and immutable object that is God himself can fill this infinite abyss."

Nothing can fill up a part of you that God created to fill himself.  Not religion, bible study, attending church, not serving God, not duty.  He's a person, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity and it's not even information about him.  It's Jesus Christ himself in an intimate personal relationship with you.  That he came into the world and died to provide and rose from the grave to bring to you life of Christ in you.

    John 4:14 "...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.”

A picture of the promised Holy Spirit.  This invitation begins with, but is far more than an invitation to salvation.  If you have never committed your life to Jesus Christ, the first step toward that satisfaction is to turn away from your sin and embrace Jesus Christ by faith for your forgiveness.  Everyone has to humble themselves and make that choice to come to that decision.  For someone who has made that decision we think that salvation is the provision of it, but salvation is just access to it.  We have to draw near to God and he will draw near to us.  We have to pursue what is available to us.  When you have this raging thirst, isn't it awesome Jesus used such a common human experience?  You have a soul that was created for a fellowship with God. And just like your body needs water, Jesus is that for your soul.

    2b) Jesus is patient with our hangups.

You might say you struggle and fail and you would love to come to Jesus today.  You might feel awful about your struggles.  You might have things you're ashamed of.  I pray that God would witness to your heart that what you think is not true.  You're not in the presence of someone that is without regrets and wishes they could change their past.  But I've brought my broken life to Jesus and I've come to him with my mess.  When you've come to a place with nowhere to turn, Jesus Christ will be your water for your soul.  He will be patient with you as he was with the Samaritan lady.  Bypass the people and things that have failed you and go straight to the Lord.

    3b) Jesus is persistent with our humanness.

We view everything from the horizontal.  We have a tendency to worry about earthly things.  We come together to worship our Lord and to turn our view to a vertical direction. 

    4b) Jesus is confident in what He offers us.

Ever over promised and under delivered?  Jesus does not fail, he does not do that.  He is supremely confident in what he offers. 

My prayer for you...

Lord we turn to you today and though we got to this passage and gave come to know that you are what we need, you have what we thirst for.  And it's yourself Lord.  To be known and to be loved and to be comforted by.  And to be powered by and directed by the God of the universe, the second person of the trinity, the son of God who loves me and gave himself for me.  Oh Lord, that we could draw into deeper intimacy with you.  Thank you Lord that you are revealed here, revealed as water for our thirsty souls.  Forgive us for trying to quench our thirst at dirty wells and empty cisterns, and parched places.  Thank you Lord that what you confidently assert, you are for us.  Be it now, be it this week.  I pray in Jesus name, Amen.