The Wells We Keep Returning To

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I’m thankful for Rod reading that scripture so well. It’s a long scripture, and it’s helpful to hear different voices, especially when they’re read well. So thanks, Rod. When you see others who are gone, tell them thank you for doing that.

I want to hold that story in our minds—that what we just heard, and what we have here, is a very vulnerable woman at a vulnerable time of her life, coming face to face with Jesus, the one who offers her everything she desperately longs for.

And that is the case for each and every one of us here today. We desperately long for Jesus, even when we don’t know it. The deepest desires of our hearts are met in the face of Jesus when he meets us at the very place we are searching for what we long for.

And he says, “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.”

I have a friend who owns a business at great personal and emotional—even physical—cost to himself. There are much better ways, in my opinion, that he could provide for himself. Most months he doesn’t even make enough to turn his cell phone on. He often lives in the dark without enough money for electricity.

He could get a job that would provide for these basic necessities, but he owns his business and he’s very, very proud of that. And it gives him a source of self-respect. It gives him a sense of being respected. It gives him a sense of significance and value and worth.

And so, even though he could do other things, working for people is a cost too great. His desire for significance, his desire for meaning and purpose, his desire to be seen in a certain way outweighs his desire for anything else—even the basic necessities of life.

And I have a question for you this morning. This question is a simple question. It’s one that Jesus asks people, even when the answer seems obvious.

The question is: What do you want?

What do you really want?

What’s the desire beneath the desire? What is it that drives your behavior—the desire that drives the kind of life you live, the kinds of choices you make?

What do you want?

This woman at the well asks for water that would quench her thirst so that she would not have to keep coming back to the well over and over again to satisfy that thirst. This is a physical thirst that she longs to have met. She has to come and return to this well every single day.

It’s a physical thirst, and Jesus offers her a spiritual source for this physical thirst. He flips the desire on its head and diagnoses the actual desire beneath the thirst.

Now, what Jesus doesn’t say here—if you keep the story in mind—is this. She says, “Then I won’t have to come back to the well.” Jesus says that if she asked, he would give her water that would satisfy forever, and she would never thirst again.

What he’s not saying is that if you become a follower of him, you’ll never need water or food again.

Jesus is much like in John 3, the chapter before. He’s having a series of spiritual conversations. He has the conversation with Nicodemus: “You must be born again.”

Nicodemus says, “What do you mean, be born again? Enter my mother’s womb again?” He’s thinking physically.

But Jesus flips the script and says these things in the physical world have a spiritual connection. They are designed with a spiritual reality. And he’s drawing us into that spiritual reality.

He’s taking advantage of the opportunity with this woman to tap into the desperation our bodies have for water and food—the basic necessities, the things that sustain us to survive, to give us life and energy.

And he says something profound.

Just as you, as a human being, are desperate for food and water to live, you are just as desperate for the life that comes from God.

You have physical wells that you must return to again and again to quench your physical thirst or your need for food. But there are also spiritual wells that people return to over and over again, trying to satisfy the needs—the deepest longings—of their hearts, trying desperately to get them filled.

And here’s the important thing: these spiritual wells are also physical wells, because the worlds are interconnected.

So often we have wells to which we go in this physical, real world that are trying to meet spiritual needs, and they are not designed to meet them.

So let’s talk about some of those wells that we return to.

There’s a lot we could say about this passage, by the way—42 verses—so we’re honing in on one idea. We’re not doing a full exegesis of the whole thing. We’re going to this idea of the well.

What wells do we go to in this world to satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts?

We talked about this last Lent. We are in the season of Lent, which is a wonderful time to get in touch with what really motivates us—the desire beneath the desire that we all have—and where we go to fulfill and meet these desires.

God says, as we just sang, “Come, all who are thirsty. Come, all who long for life. Come to the waters that will never run dry.”

But we often go to other wells that can never truly satisfy.

And what are we looking for there?

We talked about this last year. There are three core desires, three categories of desires that we find as human beings beneath the stated desires that we have.

We have a desire for belonging.

The question is: Am I enough? Am I wanted? Do I belong?

That desire drives so much of our behavior, doesn’t it? We go to so many wells looking for belonging.

Another one is security.

Am I safe? Is there enough?

We long to know that we are okay, that we’re secure, that we’re safe.

And then we long for significance.

We wonder: Do I matter? Do I have a purpose?

I want to state that these are really good desires. These are God-given desires.

If you desire to be significant, if you desire to matter, if you desire to have belonging and to know that you’re enough, to be safe—those are good desires. God-given desires.

Desires that God designed the world, in relationship with him, to meet in the Garden of Eden—in this environment of shalom, where all is well.

And these desires are met in relationship with God, in relationship with other human beings, and in relationship with creation.

However, we don’t live in the garden, do we?

We live in a fallen world where shalom was broken, where love has been shattered in many ways. We fail to love God. We fail to love one another. Others fail to love us. We fail to love creation.

And so we find ourselves longing for these desires.

In a broken world, we lose sight of the true source of where these desires are met. And so much of our life is looking for these things everywhere, every place—but God.

And so when we talk about idolatry, we often think about worshiping some statue or idol. But what is idolatry really?

Idolatry is actually going and looking for what we truly desire—the deepest desires of our hearts—in anyone or anything or any experience other than Jesus.

We give our lives to that thing. We orient ourselves to that thing. And we return to that thing, or that person, or that relationship, or that experience, or that bank account, or whatever it is—and it becomes an idol.

It draws us because we are desperately longing to get that desire for significance, belonging, and security met.

So that’s where we are.

So what are some of the wells to which we go?

You can probably think of the wells that you go to. One well is substances. We go to the well of drugs, alcohol. We could even name food as one of these things.

Many of our addictions—the things we go to—are not so much a desire for pleasure, but a deeper desire for these things: belonging, significance, security.

And when we don’t have these things—when they’ve been taken from us, or we’ve lost them, or we’ve given them away, or whatever has happened—these substances become a substitute for what only God can provide.

The healing that we long to have. The pain removed. The trauma removed from our childhood. Whatever has happened to us.

I’ve told you this before. I’ve shared this story, and I’ve gotten her permission to share it, so I’ll share it again.

Our neighbor Betty—who is a beautiful woman in her forties, about this tall—has most of her teeth missing from drug abuse. She comes by our house quite often.

One day she came up to me and said, “Jesse, I’ve been clean and sober for three days.”

I said, “That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful, Betty. How does it feel?”

She said, “It hurts.”

I said, “From the withdrawal?”

She said, “No. From the memories.”

Why does Betty use?

Because she hurts. Because she can’t forget what’s happened to her. The children that she’s lost. The things that happened to her as a child.

And so she returns. She goes to a well. But it’s a well that only gives temporary relief and actually leaves her more thirsty.

That’s what we do—the same thing.

We have different, more socially acceptable addictions. Socially acceptable wells. Maybe less destructive physically, but we find ourselves returning to wells.

What are some of the wells that we go to?

The well of success.

The well of financial security—needing our bank account to reflect a certain number and not drop. Or if it’s below that number, we find all kinds of anxiety.

Why?

Because we desire security.

Or we desire significance. And we find significance in a certain amount of success, recognition, or approval. And we’re looking for these things in the well of success—in business, in life, in marriage, in parenting, whatever it is.

So many times I get upset with my kids not because I care about their spiritual formation, but because they might be making me look bad.

And we have the courage to admit it honestly. You start to think, why do I get so upset?

Or they challenge me in a way where I feel disrespected.

It’s not that I care whether they’re respectful people. It’s that I care that I feel devalued, less significant.

So we start to understand: why am I responding this way?

Because I’m not getting what I want.

I’m not getting what I want in this well.

But the problem is your marriage, your children, your job, your bank account, your food—they were never designed to give you what you need.

Jesus is the one who was designed to give you what you need.

Other wells exist too.

The well of materialism.

The well of sexual satisfaction.

The well of constant stimulation.

The well of knowledge.

“If I could just know enough.”

Why do some people pursue knowledge—even biblical knowledge?

Sometimes it’s to know God. But sometimes, if we’re honest, it’s not to know God. It’s to know about God so that I look important. So that I’m esteemed in this environment. So that I have significance.

So that I know I matter.

Or so that I belong to this group of people that needs me to believe a certain way or know a certain thing.

And so I seek my belonging with this group of people.

Or so that I’m safe—so I don’t get excommunicated. So they know that I know the right things and I’m toeing the line.

Whatever it may be, we always need to pay attention to this question:

What is the desire beneath the desire that drives my actions?

Why do I go to this well?

So often we become like a person stranded in the middle of the ocean.

This is a bad situation to be in.

No water in the middle of the ocean.

You have all the water you could ever ask for, and yet you are dying of thirst.

The only available water is salt water.

If you drink that water, you may be tempted because you need water.

You might think, “Well, let’s try it.”

But if you drink it, something strange happens. It may temporarily feel like relief, but the salt actually pulls more water out of your body.

The more you drink, the more dehydrated you become.

The thing you believe will save you is actually making you more thirsty.

That’s the situation we get in.

That’s what these wells often do to our lives.

They promise relief. They promise comfort. They promise security.

But instead of satisfying our thirst, they often make us more desperate for the thing we are searching for.

You see that over and over again.

More food.

There’s not enough food to satisfy the deepest desire.

There’s not enough sex, or pornography, or images. You just get more and more hungry the more you take it in.

You can’t satisfy it.

It’s like drinking ocean water trying to quench your thirst.

These are false wells.

And so when the woman meets Jesus at this physical well, Jesus sees a woman—yes, on the surface—looking for water for her family in the heat of the day.

But he sees deeper.

He sees beneath the surface.

And he sees her like we all want to be seen—coming to this water.

And she hears him speak life-giving words.

Now this woman—there are many things that have been said about her. There are many sermons that have been preached. This is a beautiful story.

I want to dispel maybe some of what I think are myths around this woman.

Because she comes to this well, and some say she comes at a strange time of day. She’s a Samaritan woman, first of all.

If you know about Samaritans—I think most of you do—but I’ll give a quick ten-second explanation.

Samaritans are genetically Jewish people who have intermarried with Gentiles. So they are both Jew and Gentile. They were considered “half-breeds,” to put it bluntly.

Because of that, they were not liked by the Jewish people, and they were not liked by the Gentile people.

To the Jewish people, they represented disobedience to God—because the Jewish people were supposed to remain separate from the Gentile nations. So the Samaritans were seen as the product of infidelity and compromise.

The text says that Jesus had to go through Samaria.

Typically, Jewish people would walk around Samaria to avoid it. So this is already a group of people who are avoided—people who live on the margins.

Then she comes to the well at a time when people typically would not come. It’s the heat of the day. It’s noon.

Some speculate that maybe she was ashamed or embarrassed and didn’t want to be with the other women. I don’t know—the text doesn’t say that. But it’s possible.

So Jesus is at this well, and this woman comes.

He asks her a question.

He says, “Go call your husband.”

And she says, “I don’t have a husband.”

Jesus says, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband.”

Now this passage has sometimes been taught like this: Jesus is naming her sin.

Look at this woman. She’s been married and divorced five times, and now she’s living with someone she’s not even married to.

So we hear Jesus calling out her sin, and we imagine this moment where she feels guilt and shame in the heat of the day while Jesus exposes her wrongdoing.

But let’s flip the narrative.

What if that’s not what’s happening here?

Maybe it’s something far deeper.

This may actually be Jesus acknowledging this woman’s pain, her marginalization, and her victimization.

Let me explain.

In the ancient world, women did not have the authority to divorce their husbands. They simply did not have that power.

In rare circumstances, extremely wealthy women might have had that authority, but this woman almost certainly would not have.

Second, Jesus does not say, “You have been divorced five times.” He says, “You have had five husbands.”

We are in the ancient Near East, where life expectancy is short. There is no modern medicine. People die frequently.

So it is entirely possible that this woman had been widowed multiple times.

Some of those marriages might have ended in divorce—but if so, the husband would have been the one divorcing her.

And as a woman, that would leave her extremely vulnerable.

As an unmarried woman in that culture, you needed the covering and protection and provision of either a father or a husband.

If you did not have that, you were incredibly vulnerable.

This is why the Bible repeatedly commands people to care for widows and orphans.

So imagine this woman.

Five times she has lost a husband—either through death or divorce.

In that culture, husbands could divorce their wives for almost anything. Some rabbis even taught that a man could divorce his wife for burning dinner.

There were essentially no protections.

So this could be a woman who has experienced tremendous betrayal, abuse, abandonment, and grief.

Five husbands.

Perhaps she lost them.

Every time she lost a husband, she became more vulnerable and fell lower on the social ladder.

Eventually she ends up at the very bottom.

Now she is living with a man who is not her husband—desperate for covering, desperate for provision, desperate for protection.

We don’t know the full story.

Maybe she’s happily with this man. Maybe she’s trapped in the situation. Maybe it’s abusive.

We don’t know.

But we do know this: she is vulnerable.

She has experienced pain. She has experienced rejection.

And this is what Jesus sees.

He sees her thirst.

He acknowledges her desire for belonging, for security, for significance.

Her desire to be seen.

Her desire to be known.

And this is the level at which he speaks to her.

He connects her physical thirst for water to her spiritual thirst for love, belonging, healing, and forgiveness.

This is how Jesus meets her.

And he meets her with an offer of something of unsurpassing worth. It’s a gift that causes joy to well up from deep within her—a gift that changes her so profoundly that she runs back to her town.

We get to that in a minute.

At our church, New Creation, we have a young man who just showed up recently. God has clearly been working in his life.

He had never been inside a church building before. I’ve met very few people who have never been in a church, but he had never heard the story of Jesus. He had never heard anything about it.

But he came with this simple realization: “I need God. I need to surrender.”

He was at the end of himself, in a really hard and dark place. And he gave his life to the Lord.

Over the last three or four weeks, it’s been beautiful to watch.

He texts me sometimes late at night. I’ll wake up to messages from him saying things like, “I’m crying here. I feel so bad for Jesus. Jesus goes from place to place and he has no place to live, and people are rejecting him.”

He’s just seeing these stories for the very first time.

It’s so beautiful and refreshing to see someone encounter Jesus with brand-new eyes—someone who’s never met Jesus before.

He texted me last night. He’s currently living in our church building. He’s going through a divorce, and he has all kinds of things going on in his life.

He said, “Why do I feel happy? All this stuff is happening. Why do I feel happy?”

We talked about this idea of joy—the fruit of the Spirit, the well that satisfies.

He’s found the lover of his soul.

He’s shared so much of his story, and in many ways he’s much like this woman in his life. He’s found someone who sees him, like Jesus sees this woman.

He’s found someone who loves him, who will be there for him, and who won’t leave him.

And it’s grounding him.

His deepest desires are being met in Jesus.

This is what this woman experiences.

I love this part of the story.

She goes running from the well, having met Jesus, and she tells everyone.

She says, “Come meet the person who told me everything I ever did.”

Now that’s an interesting testimony.

“Come find the guy who’s going to tell you everything that’s in your heart.”

Anyone want to sign up for that meeting?

Publicly. At the well.

But this is the thing about Jesus.

We don’t have to be afraid when Jesus reveals our hearts.

Because yes—there will be all kinds of junk there.

But at the core of it is this: wounded souls looking for what only God can provide.

All the false wells we’ve gone to—the things that bring shame and guilt.

When we see that, at our core, we desire Jesus—we desire God—we desire the life-giving water that satisfies.

We hunger for belonging.

We hunger for security.

We hunger for significance.

And God wants to give these things to us.

So we don’t have to be afraid for Jesus to meet us where we are and reveal all of that.

Because he meets us with love.

He meets us with healing.

He meets us with forgiveness.

That’s why she’s so excited.

That’s why she wants people to come.

“Come get exposed by Jesus.”

Because that’s the best place you can be—right at the well where you’re trying to get your needs met.

Jesus meets you there with the truly life-giving water of his life.

So that’s what she finds.

And the question for us is this:

What do you want?

What wells are you going to to get those desires met?

And how would it feel to have those desires revealed by Jesus?

To let Jesus pour his life-giving water into the wound—into that fear, into that failure, into your life—so that you would never thirst again.

Every human being has a thirst that cannot be satisfied by anything in this world.

We have a thirst for love, belonging, forgiveness, healing, and peace.

And I think we go to these wells, and Jesus is there.

He’s always there at the wells.

The next time you find yourself at the well of success, or the well of pornography, or sex, or money, or achievement—whatever it is—Jesus is there.

Not to say, “You better not do that.”

But to say, “Come to me.”

Just come to the well that will satisfy you.

Stop drinking salt water. It’s killing you.

He stands ready and says, “If you knew the gift of God—if you knew the gift of God—you would ask me for living water.”

I want to invite you to ask Jesus for that living water.

And for many of you who have already given your lives to Jesus—we are forgetful people.

We still go to all these other wells.

We’re constantly offered alternative wells. We’re constantly lied to about them.

So we need to pay attention to what we are really wanting—and why we go to the places we go to numb ourselves, to satisfy ourselves, or to get our needs met.

Every week is an opportunity to return to the well that is Jesus.

To meet Jesus at the false wells.

To bring your thirst.

To bring your wounds.

To bring the places where you have been searching for life—

and meet Jesus there.