My Greatest Need

Can you believe it? We are only 6 weeks away from Easter, one of the most celebrated Christian holidays. The Lord laid it on my heart to talk about what Jesus has done for us as we lead up to the Easter season.

Today, let's think about all that Jesus has done for us. When I think about what Jesus has done for me, it's quite a long list. But one of the things that continues to come to my mind is how Jesus fulfills and supplies our spiritual needs. Jesus called it "living water."

On Wednesday nights, we've been studying the Gospel of John. A couple of months ago we spent quite time talking about the Samaritan woman at the well. I want to look briefly at that story today because every time I read or think about this story, I remember how Jesus quenched my dry Spirit when I needed it the most.

Our physical thirst tells us when we need water, but our lives tell us how much more we need eternal living water. And this living water isn't found in a bottle or a fountain. And just like the Samaritan woman whom Jesus encountered at the well, we find that living water only when we meet the One who knows us better than we know ourselves. Prayer.

We will be using John chapter 4 today for our passage. In verse 7 we are invited into this passage by the words "a woman of Samaria". We don't know her name, but we do know where she was from, and where she is from tells us a lot about her.

Just before these verses we see that Jesus chose to travel this path. He and His disciples were heading out of Judea and back to Galilee. The fastest route between the two cities was to go through an area called Samaria. Even though this was the fastest route, it wasn't always the most traveled route for Jews. I have mentioned before the long history of the animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans. As a rule, they didn't like each other very much. Some scholars suggest that the Jews would often take a much longer route to Galilee to avoid even traveling through Samaria. That wasn't the case with Jesus on this day.

John 4:7-14 – “A woman of Samaria came to draw water. “Give me a drink,” Jesus said to her, 8 because his disciples had gone into town to buy food. 9 “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” she asked him. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. 10 Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.” 11 “Sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’? 12 You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.” 13 Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”

From age 12 to age 17 I hauled hay every summer for my friend's dad on his ranch between San Antonio and Floresville. You haven't worked until you haul hay. You can't start hauling hay until the ground dries out. That means you start about noon. One of the hottest points of the day. We would haul 100 bales at a time from the field into the barn. After each trip you were very thirsty. But you had to learn that you must drink water a sip at a time or you will get very sick from drinking it too fast. And then about halfway through the next load you were thirsty again. I'm glad that the living water that Jesus offers causes me never thirst spiritually again.

We don't know exactly why the Samaritan woman came to the well at noon. But it's most likely because she was seen as an outcast, even among her own people. If that was the case, she had likely come at midday to be alone and avoid the looks or comments from the women who would come in the morning hours to get water. We will see later in this passage that she had some issues in her personal life that were likely the reason she was rejected by others.

But instead of being able to privately draw water, the woman was greeted with a request from a Jewish man. Nothing about this experience was making sense to her. "How is it that you ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For Jews do not associate with Samaritans."