What Are You Quenching Your Thirst With? John 4:11-19

“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 livestock?” 13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 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.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” 16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” 17 “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” 19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.

Like Nicodemus, the woman at the well is thinking in only physical not spiritual terms.  When the woman calls Jacob "our father", it shows she still thought of herself as a Jew.  Sychar was called "Shechem" in Jesus' day.  It was a place in which many significant things happened in Israel's history. 

This is where Abraham came when he came into Canaan to claim the Promised Land.  This where Abraham built an altar as a memorial to the covenant God had made with him and the people of Israel. This is where Jacob and his wives came after journeying from his uncle Laban's household. Jacob bought land in Shechem and also built an altar there, which became the place known as Jacob's well.  This is also the place Jacob gave to his son Joseph, and where Joseph's bones were eventually buried.   

Jesus uses this occasion and location to speak to the woman's deepest need.  She has gone through five husbands, and the one she is with is not her husband.  She is trying to fill her soul with men, which will never quench the real thirst she has for meaning and purpose in her life. She is hoping a man will fill a spiritual void that only God can fill. She has come in shame and is thirsty for something she doesn't even understand she needs.  

"It’s common for people to try and satisfy their God-created inner thirst through many things, or through any thing except for what Jesus gives. People are thirsty – they want, they long, they search, they reach; but only what Jesus gives satisfies to the deepest levels of man’s soul and spirit." (Guzik)

Because Jesus knew her story even he meets with her, she thinks he is a prophet.  This is the only name she can give Jesus to make sense of the encounter with him.  Though she is thirsty, and the only One who can truly quench her thirst is right in front of her, she will now turn to an age old argument about what location was the true place of worship.  Samaria or Jerusalem?  We will learn more about that tomorrow. 

In what ways did the woman try to use men in her life to fill the "hole in her soul"?  How do both men and women do this today in many different ways?  What else do people use to try and fill the void they feel within? Is there anything in your life you are using to quench a thirst that only Jesus can quench?  If living water is available to you through Him, why would you fill yourself with anything else?