The bells are ringing, the tree is decorated, and the kids are counting down the hours until Christmas morning. Only two days remain until that holiday wrapping paper you worked so hard to find will be shredded all over the living room floor. Our kids hold nothing back when telling people each and everything they want to find underneath the Christmas tree. We adults are more subtle about it. Grown ups say we dont want anything and start dropping hints starting in July as to what is on our wish list. And each year we are all ultimately in search of a feeling. That feeling is the pursuit of happiness.
How many times have you thought to yourself, “If I only had (fill in blank) I would be so happy!” We always want something different than what we currently have. And companies like Apple and Microsoft have capitalized on this human trait. Just as soon as you get the I Phone 3, the I Phone 4 comes out. You rush out to get the I Phone 4 only to realize that the next I Phone 5 is soon to arrive complete with a teleportation app! Computers are no different. Even look at cars. You purchase a brand new car and a year later it is out dated. How many times have you picked out that perfect outfit at the mall and a month later, the style is no longer fashionable? Our children even deal with this problem in toys! If you get them a GI Joe that talks, shortly after there will be an improved version that talks while shooting a gun. If you buy a baby doll that your child can feed you can bet that there will be a doll coming out that can eat and then relieve themselves!
We are enamored constantly with the things of future garage sales. And we base our happiness on things we dont have. The world view is that the grass is always greener. We think things will be better if we only had “X”. But once we have “X” then its not long until our eyes begin to stray to the next new thing. So it becomes a cycle in our lives. And that well we drink from in hopes of eternally quenching that void in our lives only temporarily quenches our thirsts.
So my question to you this Christmas season is, are you happy? What is it that you may be trying to fill your life with in hopes that it will provide everlasting happiness? Is it a hobby you pursue? Is it the newest I Phone or Mac Computer? Is it a relationship? Everyone has a different well we go to for relief. But eventually, we will be left let down once again. Why is this? How can we put a stop to our constant searching and find that everlasting happiness in our lives? Jesus tells us the answer in John chapter 4.
“Now he (Jesus) had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)”
Now lets stop right here in this story. Right away something is off here. Think about what is the hottest time of day? Like in the summer time if you see someone working or doing chores outside at high noon you would think they were crazy! If you have chores to do, you do them in the morning or the evening, but never at noon! I make this point because historically, back in the first century, women did not go to draw water from the well in the middle of the day. Drawing water was a chore that was done very early in the morning. Even in third world countries, like Panama where we are currently serving as missionaries, the Indians will draw water very early in the mornings and draw enough to get them through the day. Yet we see immediately that this woman is drawing water in the hottest part of the day. This is very strange, and we’ll see why she does this in the following verses. And Jesus sees this woman and asks her for a drink of water.
“The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?”
Again, it is important to stop and break this down as to see how this story is full of surprising elements. To call the relationships between the Jews and the Samaritans one of racial tension would be a massive understatement. The level of hate these two races of people had for one another makes any race problems we have today pale in comparison. So right away, this woman is almost at a loss for words that Jesus, a Jewish man, is actually talking to her.
“Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. 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?”
Jesus answers her, basically saying if she only knew who he was and what he was offering her, she would be asking him for his water. And right here, Jesus begins to point out the source of the womans problems. Why she is unhappy. She is drinking from the wrong well. Yet this woman still doesnt realize that God himself is with her and is a bit confused. So paraphrasing, she is saying “How can you offer me water? You dont even have a cup? Are you too good to drink from this well? All the people that our nation was built on have drank from this well. So are you better than all of them? Are you too good for this water?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but 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.”
15The 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.”
16He 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. 18The 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.”
Jesus pinpointed her problem. Jesus asks her about her husband to get her to open up. And once she stated she didnt have a husband, Jesus responded to her, “You’re right, you dont have a husband. You have had five and the man you are sleeping with right now you are not even married too!” And this brings us full circle as to why this woman was drawing water at noon. In this time, adultery and sexual relations out of wed lock was a serious offense. So much so that if caught you could be killed for this sin. This woman was shamed and didnt go to draw water with the other women early in the morning. She avoided the towns people and went to the well at a time when no one would be there. She was living with unrepentant sin in her life and was carrying the burden and guilt of that daily. I love the next verse….verse 19……
19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.”
This makes me laugh every time I read it. Here Jesus has just reveled her secret sin to her and she just concludes that Jesus must be a prophet. But he’s much more than that. By the way, this shows us that the idea of a secret is a lie. Nothing is a secret from God.
20Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
25The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.”
Did you catch this? This woman who was ashamed and afraid to go around the others in her town due to her sin, after meeting Jesus, was no longer wallowing in her sin. She was set free and her sin was used as a testimony of how Jesus changed her. If you continue reading the passage says that many people in the town went on to place their faith in Jesus due to this woman’s testimony. Whatever we have done in our past, God doesnt want us to cast our dark past into a closet and throw away the key. If we repent, we are to use our failures to show how great Christ is once we turn to him! And when this is done, as the passage point out, many people can be saved.
My point is that when we go to things other than our relationship with Christ to look for happiness, we will always leave thirsty. We all too often drink from the wrong well. And I want to highlight two different wells that we tend to drink from in our society and culture today.
1. Money and Comfort
Again, look no farther than your local mall to see this. We always have to have the newest of everything. In America we classify certain things as needs when the rest of the world would classify them as wants. Do we really need an I Pad 5 with an app that can wax our car for us? I remember back to when Lacy was pregnant with our first son Andy. We had to have the perfect baby room. We NEEDED this new model crib that would match our walls. However, when visiting one of the remote Indian Villages in Panama recently, their baby bed was an old net hanging from the top of the house. But it functioned as their baby bed. It really put the term NEEDS and WANTS into perspective. And these NEEDS for comforts sake become more important than our relationships with Christ. Heres a question I was asked recently that will hit you hard as it sure did me……When you first wake in the morning, whats more important, immediately checking Facebook updates or opening up your bible?
2. Relationships and Sex
Hollywood has really warped us here. Women…..please hear me on this. There is no man that will, as Jerry Maguire will have you believe, that will ”Complete you”. And men, there is no woman who will fulfill all of your wildest dreams. There is no perfect spouse. Yet our society trades in relationship like baseball cards as soon as they start to feel their needs are not being met! People look to sex before marriage and finding that perfect someone over God! And as a result, no man and no woman will ever fill their voids. They will constantly be search in the well of relationships to quench their thirsts. If only they would realize that they are drawing from the wrong well.
Are you constantly thirsting for a happiness that is quenched for a time, but leaves you returning to the same well for relief? When we put our trusts, our focus on Christ, everything comes into perspective. This holiday season, look past the presents and the new technology that will soon fill your life. It will bring happiness, but only for a short time. Are the trinkets and stuff in your life keeping you in a state of happiness? They sure didnt for the woman at the well. Start this coming new year off right and replace your old well with one of living waters. Merry Christmas!
