Living Hope

Pastor Philip Miller: I think this is so beautiful that Jesus so loved this woman that he met her at the well in the heat of the day when she was shunned by everybody else. And he so gently unearths her soul's broken cisterns in order to offer to her himself the deep as the deeply satisfying living waters that her soul is so desperate for.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: Welcome to Living Hope with Pastor Philip Miller. I'm Pastor Larry McCarthy and we're so glad you've joined us for this series on identity traps. Now, Pastor Philip, I can see in my mind's eye Jesus meeting this woman at the well with such gentleness where mercy, compassion, welcoming, and truth come together. What a portrait of our Savior.

Pastor Philip Miller: Yeah, and that's the Savior we all need, isn't it? This this this I I love this scene. You know, she's nobody wants her and and she's out there by herself and but Jesus knows and Jesus cares and Jesus moves toward her, breaks the social barriers. He's a Jew, she's a Samaritan, he's a man, she's a woman. This doesn't make sense on any expectations, but Jesus runs toward her and meets her and and and he in this conversation she doesn't really want to have. She's trying to redirect all these misdirect this conversation. But but but Jesus just gently prods and probes and pushes not in not in an aggressive way, but in a a way that gently exposes the deep longing in her soul.

And and we use that language cistern here. The Old Testament talks about that God's people have abandoned him as the living waters and hewn out broken cisterns for themselves, these deep rain-catching basins that the idea is they're fissured and they're leaky and so they can't hold the water. They're they're intended to to hold and so the idea is that's our souls that they're you know, we're we're trying to fill them with all the wrong things and be happy in all the wrong ways and everything just keeps leaking out and we're abandoning the very person we're made for, a relationship with God himself.

And that's what Jesus has come to restore, to reach out to this woman, to reestablish a connection, an opportunity for her to repent and turn in faith and and to have a relationship with the God she was always meant to know and the one that will give her an identity that would that will never be in never eroded, never lost, never leaky, uh but will deeply satisfy who she is. And and that's what we need too. And so that's the invitation today as we journey with this woman. God wants to give us a better identity as well.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: Well, beloved, stay tuned after the message because Pastor Philip and I we're going to talk about how God transforms our relationship with him and with others. But now, let's go to the pulpit of the Moody Church for part three of the sermon The Samaritan, seeking satisfaction through people. Now, grab your Bibles. We're in John chapter 4 and we're going to pick up today at verse 19.

Pastor Philip Miller: Her trap, her thirst, and now her transformation. Her transformation verse 19. The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. This last comment about her husband is so personal, it's so perceptive, it must be prophetic. That's her conclusion. I I perceive you're a prophet, right? And then she goes off on this theological tangent. She asks him the hardest theological question she knows about the fundamental disputes about worship between the Jewish people and the Samaritan people. And Jesus is so brilliant. He answers it real quickly and then he brings it right back around to her.

So efficient. Verse 25. The woman says to him, I know Messiah is coming, he who is called the Christ. And when he comes, he will tell us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. So in this moment Jesus gets super real with her. You know, she said he's like, look, I know the real you all the way down, good, bad, and ugly. And now I'm going to show you the real me. I'm going to show you who I am. The one you've been longing for, the one the prophets have written about, the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one of God, the one who will tell you everything you ever needed to know.

I who speak to you am he. I'm right here. The satisfier your soul is longing for is standing right here in front of you. Just then verse 27 the disciples come back. Oh man, they interrupt at the worst parts, don't they? They marveled why he's talking to this woman. And they said no one said to him, what do you seek? Or why are you talking with her? Verse 28. So the woman left her water jar. This is not an incidental detail. John wants you to perceive in this abandoned water jar that she has found a better living water.

You see that? She came looking for one kind of water. She left with another kind of water. She went away into the town and said unto the people, come see a man. How many times had they heard her say that? Come see a man. Come see a man. She's always saying, come see a man. But this time it's different. Come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? So they went out of the town and were coming to him. Skip down to verse 39. Many of the Samaritans from the town believed in him because of the woman's testimony.

He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them and he stayed there two days and many more believed because of his word. And they said to the woman, it's no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard it for ourselves and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world. And so a revival breaks out in Samaria and these people this that everyone had abandoned, but not Jesus, discovered that Jesus is Messiah. He is the Christ and he is the Savior, not just of Israel, but the Savior of the world.

All on the testimony of this woman that Jesus met at a well who left her water jar behind because she had found a better living water for her soul. And the Samaritan woman, you see, is learning to look to Jesus for the lasting satisfaction her soul longs for. The Samaritan woman is learning to look to Jesus for the lasting satisfaction her soul longs for. I think this is so beautiful that Jesus so loved this woman that he met her at the well in the heat of the day when she was shunned by everybody else. And he so gently unearths her soul's broken cisterns in order to offer to her himself the deep as the deeply satisfying living waters that her soul is so desperate for.

What she could never find in all the matches and all the men and all the marriages she would now find in Messiah, her Christ, her Jesus. Because, friends, God alone can truly satisfy. Amen?

Guest (Male): Amen.

Pastor Philip Miller: God alone can truly satisfy. As the psalmist write in Psalm 16 verse 11, in your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forever more. Psalm 107 verse 9. He satisfies the longing soul and the hungry soul he fills with good things. Psalm 22 verse 26. The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied. Those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever. Which is why Jesus, the incarnate son of God, when he walks on planet Earth declares in John 6:35, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall never hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

Or John 7:37. If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scriptures have said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Friends, the satisfaction our souls long for is found in the presence of God alone. That 's why Jesus is calling us, calling this woman, calling every single one of us to turn aside from the broken cisterns we build for ourselves. Our orphan hearts build cisterns to try to collect our own rain to satisfy our own thirst and it's it they're broken and they leak and they're dry and they never work.

And Jesus is inviting us instead to come to him like little children, drinking deeply of the soul-nourishing, life-giving fountain of our Father's presence, which is available to us in him. How did this happen? Friends, do you realize on the cross Jesus cried out, I thirst. I thirst in order that we might never thirst again. He came for us in all of our shame, in all of our estrangement when no one would give us the time of day. When we were desperate and looking in all the wrong places for love and satisfaction, while we were yet enemies, Christ died for us.

He took our place. He died in our place and for our sake offered his life for us. He hung thirsty on the cross so that you and I might never thirst again. As Saint Augustine writes in his famous book The Confessions, Thou hast made us for thyself and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee. This is a profound insight. Our restless desires, friends, are like homing beacons pointing us to the one we were made for. Pascal, Blaise Pascal in his Pensées writes, what else does this craving and this helplessness proclaim but there that there was once in man a true happiness of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace.

This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, though none can help. Since this infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, in other words, by God himself. What Augustine and Pascal are telling us is that our souls were made for God. There is a God-shaped void in the heart of every human being. Our souls were made for him and apart from God there is no lasting satisfaction. He is the desire and longing of our heart. The problem is not with our deep desire for satisfaction. That is God-ordained. We just try to satisfy it in all the wrong ways.

As CS Lewis writes in a famous talk called The Weight of Glory, this is what he says. If we consider the unblushing promises of reward held out in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

And so Jesus cries out not just to this woman, not just in Jerusalem in the first century, but all the way down through the corridors of time he cries out today. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever drinks the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Friends, are you thirsty this morning? Come and drink. Come and drink.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: This is Living Hope with Pastor Philip Miller. I'm Pastor Larry McCarthy and, beloved, every single episode of Living Hope reaches someone because a listener chose to give. Now, if you'd like to be one of those partners today, we'd love to send you a very special resource. Simply go to livinghopeoffer.com or call us 1-800-215-5001. We're so glad you've joined us today as we disarm the Samaritan woman's identity trap. Now, Pastor Philip, God himself is the real and lasting answer to the thirst that the Samaritan woman was was trying to figure out all this time. It's God who provides the answer.

Pastor Philip Miller: Yeah, and and this is a beautiful offer that that Jesus is extending to all of us. You know, that as he cries out, you know, come to me and drink because these are the living waters that you need. They're you 're not going to find them anywhere else, but you 're going to find them in me. He 's offering himself to us as the deep nourishment that our souls were always meant to have. Uh Jesus himself is going to supply those needs. We're made for God and we need him. That relationship is what's going to actually satisfy our souls.

And so it really is the answer to all those broken cisterns, right? These these things that we that we think are going to fill us up and it's all these relationships. It's our parents, it's romantic partners, it's children, it's marriage and family, it's having all the right relationships in life. We think those things are going to make us happy, those things are going to fill us up. That's what 's going to give us what we need in life. Uh but all of those are leaky. They're all of them running dry. They're they're they're they're finite uh supplies.

And the difference here is that Jesus is saying a relationship with God is is a totally different kind of water supply. It's a artesian well where the where the fountain is gurgling from its roots and as you draw water off the top it's replenishing from below. And as you come to God it's it's not like you your thirst goes away. You keep going back and you drink and you drink and you drink again. This isn't drink once from the fountain of God relationship with God and you're satisfied forever. You never have to thirst again. When Jesus says, come to me and drink and you'll never thirst again because I'll give you an endless artesian well supplying your soul.

What what he's saying is you won't ever have to go anywhere else. You are going to keep drinking. You won't have to search for anything else because this supply is an endless supply of of resources that you have in God. God is an infinite well of joy and delight and pleasure and happiness. And as your soul drinks here, you will be satisfied and you won't never have to look anywhere else again. And so your soul will be satisfied even in heaven. Even in heaven I think we're going to be constantly drinking at the fountain of who God is for all eternity because we're finite.

We're we we need to be sustained just like we need food and water to sustain our bodies. Our souls need the living God to satisfy who we are all the way down. So this is this is our calling and this is what Jesus is giving us in himself. It's beautiful.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: So when we find satisfaction then with God, there's a change in our actual relationship with God, yes?

Pastor Philip Miller: Yeah. Well, so I think sometimes we think, okay, God's there, he he sent Jesus to die on the cross. Uh he's provided for my salvation, right? So I I if I believe in him, I get my ticket to heaven. And that's the main thing God is on about. And but but what what we're seeing here is Jesus is saying, no, no, no, no, I'm your life. Not only am I the one who saved you and gave you an opportunity to be reconciled to God, this is actually what you're made for. You're made for a relationship with God, to abide in me, to to draw strength and life from me so that God himself is the supply of our soul to give us the deep satisfaction that we're we're meant to have.

In other words, this is our life. And in to be alive in Christ is to have an abundant life that is regularly deeply drawing upon who God is to nourish the deep roots of our souls. Like we we we are desperate that we need grace every day, all day. And we need the presence of God to sustain our souls. And and so I I think it was John Piper that showed me this. He said, you know, when you go to the well and you drink, as soon as you've drank drank that nourishing, satisfying, delicious water that is so good, you immediately go and he says, what's that?

What is that of having drunk deeply? It's worship. It's worship. Worship is the response of the soul that has been deeply satisfied by who God is. And so as we delight ourselves in God, we actually become people who are overflowing regularly with worship. We we we give praise and glory to God because he's our everything. He's what we need. And so worship is actually the fruit of having drunk deeply and had our souls deeply satisfied and nourished by the presence, the power, the goodness, the grace, the wonder of who God is. And so it turns us out in worship.

And then it turns us into evangelists because if you've tasted really good bread or you've drunk deeply at the well you got to tell someone, right? You got to say, hey, you come here, come here. This is the best water. You got to try this. Like it's and because God's endless, you don't have to worry about sharing because God's God can supply all of our needs according to his riches in Christ Jesus, right? Which are glorious. So so we can share and we can worship together and invite other people in and that this is this is a beautiful thing and this is what God has called us to.

So it changes our relationship with God in in a profound way.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: Changes our relationship with God. It changes how we look at ourselves. You're saying it changes how we look at others as well. It's interesting in the story of the woman at the well. She leaves and now goes and talks to who?

Pastor Philip Miller: Yeah, the very people that she she was worried about shunning her. And that's why she was avoiding she had to go to the well at the wrong time because she was avoiding social interactions with people that were judging her. She was feeling shame. She expected something from them, wasn't getting it, so she had to isolate. And then as soon as she has the well of her soul being supplied by a relationship with Jesus, the Messiah who came and met her in the midst of all of her brokenness and and gave her a different kind of identity that starts gurgling up from the roots of her soul.

And then she goes back to the very people she was avoiding and she says, come see a man who told me everything I ever did, right? She becomes an evangelist, a missionary, she becomes a minister, she comes pouring out in relationship with those same people that she was worried about shunning her in the beginning, which means something has fundamentally changed.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: And they wanted to hear her.

Pastor Philip Miller: They did. Well, and she had credibility with them, right? Because they knew her story. But something dramatically changed, right? She needed those people to validate her, to fill her soul up. That's why she was avoiding them because they they weren't doing that for her. She so she is avoiding these relationships. Well, now that Jesus is the supply of the deep satisfaction her soul needs, now she can go pour herself out in those very relationships that were not giving her what she wanted in the in the beginning. So it really is evidence of the deeply transforming work that God brings into our lives when he becomes the deep satisfaction our souls need.

That's a way better identity than trying to build our lives to get satisfaction through other people. When God himself becomes the deep satisfier of our souls, then we can go pour ourselves out in all these relationships instead of needing them to validate and affirm and to fill up who we are so we know who we are. Instead now our identity is full because God himself is our supply and now we can just pour ourselves out in relationship with others. That's a that's a freedom. That's freedom from an identity trap that's a brand new kind of identity as a child of God.

Amen. Inexhaustible source, beloved, that's what we're talking about, your relationship with the true and living God. Now, when God himself becomes the deep satisfaction of our souls, we no longer need people to validate us or to affirm us or fill us up. Our identity is full because he is our supply. And out of that fullness we can finally pour ourselves out in love. That's the very acceptance from God that Pastor Erwin Lutzer points us to in his book Failure, the Backdoor to Success. Pastor Lutzer is convinced the most persistent problem in the church is discouragement.

This book will help you rethink success itself, embrace your limitations, and accept yourself just as God has already accepted you. One man in these pages climbed the ladder of success only to reach the top and find it leaning against the wrong wall. Pastor Lutzer wants to help you lean your ladder against the right one. Along the way he offers rich pastoral wisdom like reminding us that the very best way to prepare for each day is to recall the promises of God. Listen closely, beloved. Today is the last day we're able to send you this book for a donation of any amount, so please don't wait.

To request your copy of Failure, the Backdoor to Success, simply go to livinghopeoffer.com or call us at 1-800-215-5001. That's livinghopeoffer.com 1-800-215-5001. You can also write to us at Moody Church Media, 1635 North LaSalle Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60614. We often grasp for control when our souls run dry. And next time we'll talk about Naomi's identity trap. Thanks for joining us for Living Hope where you'll always find Gospel truth for the journey of a lifetime. Living Hope is a production of Moody Church Media and is sponsored by the Moody Church.