He Loves You, and Not Just You

Well, if you have a Bible—and I hope you or somebody around you does that you can look on with—let me invite you to open with me to John 4.

It’s near the end of the Bible. Feel free to use the table of contents if you need to. John 4.

We’re going to start today with one of my favorite encounters between Jesus and another person.

He knows you too. He knows everything about you. He knows your past. He knows your present. And he knows your future. He knows your highs and he knows your lows, your joys and your sorrows. He knows all your hurts, all your pain, all your sin, all your shame.

He knows all the things you wish you had not done, or thought, or said. And he knows all the things you wish had not been done to you.

He knows you. And he loves you.

He loves you so much. Not just the person beside you, in front of you, or behind you right now. Right where you are sitting, he loves you.

He meets you right where you are. You don’t have to cover anything up. You don’t have to clean yourself up. You don’t have to pretend like you have it all together.

He meets you right where you are, and he says, “I am for you.”

And let’s be clear who he is. He’s not just someone pursuing you because of something he can get from you. He already has everything. He is God in the flesh—the God who spoke and the universe appeared, the God who causes the sun to rise and calls stars by name, the God before whom mountains quake and seas roar, the God who rules and reigns over all things in all the universe.

He loves you.

The one who formed every fiber of your being, who called you into being, the one whose breath is filling your lungs right now, whose hand is beating your heart at this moment—he knows you, and he loves you so much.

And he’s placed inside you, deep down in your soul, a thirst to believe—a thirst to believe that this world is not all there is, to believe that sin and shame and pain and sorrow will not be the end of your story. You have a thirst to believe that someone can make all that is wrong right.

And he’s given you a thirst to belong.

It’s humbling how, in a world of eight-plus billion people, you can sometimes feel alone—in your thoughts, in your emotions, in your circumstances.

You have a thirst not just to be known but to be understood; not just to be tolerated but to be treasured.

You have a thirst to be loved. You have a thirst to be loved by someone who can, at the same time, see all that you’ve done and savor all that you are.

You have a thirst to be loved by someone who will sing over you and serve you, who will seek after you when you’ve lost your way, who will shelter you amid the storms in this world, and who can shepherd you to another world where storms will be no more.

You have a thirst to believe, to belong, to be loved.

And the gospel—the good news of the Bible, the greatest news in all the world—is that there is one who can quench all of these thirsts, and his name is Jesus.

The one around whom all of history revolves can both save you from your sin and satisfy your soul forever.

So trust in him with all your heart today. Trust in him with all you are walking through, all you are struggling against. He is with you and he is for you.

He has paid the price for all your sin, all your guilt, all your shame on a cross. He has risen from the dead so that you might rise every day—and for all eternity—to drink from his well of eternal life.

He loves you.

And not just you. There are eight-plus billion other people in the world, and he knows them too. He created each one of them too. He knows their joys and their sorrows and their pains and their hurts and their sin and their shame, and he loves them too.

And to be clear, this does not lessen his love for you.

God’s love is infinite. It has no limits. Which means his love for the world does not lessen his love for the one.

And that’s the beauty of John 4.

Jesus possessed deep, authentic, astounding love for this woman at the well—and not just her.

John 4:4 says he had to pass through Samaria. But that wasn’t true for most Jewish people. They went around Samaria—around this group of people they despised. But not Jesus.

He had to go through Samaria—first and foremost to talk to one woman, but not just her.

So Jesus’ disciples had gone to buy food. When they returned, they were shocked to see him talking with the Samaritan woman. Nobody dared ask him why.

Instead, John 4:31 tells us:

“The disciples were urging him, saying, ‘Rabbi, eat.’ But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ So the disciples said to one another, ‘Has anyone brought him something to eat?’”

And listen to what Jesus said right after that. He said to them:

“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.”

So what is that? What is the will of the one who sent Jesus? What is Jesus’ food? What’s the work that he’s called to accomplish?

Well, you fast-forward in the book of John to Jesus’ prayer right before he goes to the cross, and he says:

“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

“I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.”

So what’s the work that the Father gave the Son to do?

To give eternal life.

And what’s eternal life?

“This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ.”

Christ—that means Messiah, the one promised to come.

To know and be known by God through Jesus is life forever.

So for those of you who are maybe visiting today, maybe exploring Christianity, this is the message at the center of the Bible: that we have all been created by God to know and experience life in close relationship with God.

But we have all sinned against God. We’ve all turned aside from God and his ways to ourselves and our own ways. And our sin separates us from God.

And if we die in this state of separation from God, we will spend eternity in judgment due our sin—away from God and his love for us.

But the good news of the Bible is that God loves us so much that he has come to us in the person of Jesus. And Jesus has died on a cross to pay the price for all our sin. And he has risen from the grave so that anyone, anywhere—no matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done—if you will turn from your sin and trust in Jesus, God will forgive you of all your sin and restore you to relationship with him forever in eternal life.

And Jesus says, “That’s my food.”

That’s what I live for every day: to lead people to eternal life in God.

So now back to John 4.

Jesus looks into the eyes of his disciples and he says:

“Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months; then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest.”

And as Jesus says this, the disciples look over his shoulder into the city where they have just been. And now they see scores of Samaritans coming out to see him—scores of these Gentile outcasts, despised men and women from the nations coming to see Jesus.

And look at what verse 39 says happened next:

“Many Samaritans from that 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.

Jesus did not just pass through. He stayed in Samaria.

“And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves,

and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”

Now do you think that when this happened, this Samaritan woman thought, Maybe Jesus doesn’t love me as much as I thought? No.

This Samaritan woman thought, He loves me—and all my people? All the Samaritans?

And not just the Samaritans. He is the Savior of the world.

Oh, see this today. It is so simple, yet so profound.

Jesus knows you.
Jesus loves you.
And not just you—he loves the world.

He has come to bring salvation—living water—to the world.

So stop and look at the ones in your world. And see them like he sees them.

Every single person in your workplace. I just picture their faces right now. In your school. In your neighborhood. At your gym. In the store. At that restaurant.

Every single face that is coming to your mind—every single face you see—every one of them has the same thirsts.

A thirst to believe.

Everyone is living by faith in something or someone. And like this woman, everyone thirsts to believe what is true and right and good.

And everyone has a thirst to belong. We are all wired for community with other people. In some way, none of us can thrive in complete isolation.

And yet at the same time, relationships with others can leave us battered and bruised—like broken relationships in this woman’s life that left deep voids in her heart.

And everyone has a thirst to be loved.

Even the most calloused heart longs for the affection of a parent, or a spouse, or a friend.

And just like this woman, everyone tries to quench these thirsts in all kinds of ways—in people, in jobs, in possessions, in pursuits, in all sorts of worldly pleasures—none of which can ultimately satisfy our souls.

And that’s the difference, Christian.

Yes, you walk through hard days. Yes, you have a past filled with sin and shame from what you’ve done and what has been done to you. Yes, you feel the effects of this fallen world—struggles with mental health, relational hurt, tumors and cancers and disease and disability and depression and anxiety and fear.

You feel those things—and so do they.

We all do.

But here’s the difference: Christian, you know where the fountain of living water is found.

You know the one who gives water that wells up to eternal life—water that quenches these thirsts forever.

So slow down long enough to stop and see.

And tell the one in front of you about the one who knows everything about you and loves you—and who knows everything about them and loves them.

Let this be your food—more important to you than breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

Let your food be to do the will of the one who has not just saved you and satisfied you, but the one who has sent you into the white harvest fields of Metro Washington, DC, this week.

“Open your eyes,” Jesus is saying to us today.

Look at the fields.

There are people with all these thirsts around us. I love them. I desire to quench those thirsts. And you are in their lives—with food to eat.

And how amazing is this food?

Leading other people to eternal life in God—and to the one who can save them from their sins and satisfy their souls forever.

This is amazing. What a way to live.

And this story of living water for a Gentile Samaritan woman at a well does not end in John 4.

Listen to these words that the same disciple of Jesus, John, later writes, starting in Revelation 7:9:

“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, crying out with a loud voice,

‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’”

It’s a reference to Jesus, the Messiah.

And then you keep going. Watch this—verse 13.

“One of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘Who are these clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?’ I said to him, ‘Sir, you know.’ And he said to me, ‘These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation in this world. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’”

The Lamb who paid the price for their sin.

“Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple. And he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.”

Watch this:

“They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore. The sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Yes.

This is what we’re living for.

Not just to be there—but to bring as many people as possible there.

From every nation. From all tribes. All peoples. All languages.

To a day when we will worship God and we will not hunger anymore. We will not thirst anymore. The sun will not strike us, nor any scorching heat.

No more wars.
No more cancer.
No more disease.
No more disability.
No more depression.
No more anxiety.
No more fear.
No more heartache.
No more pain.
No more sin.
No more shame.
No more sorrow.
No more death.

For Jesus will be our shepherd. He will guide us to springs of living water. And God himself will wipe every tear from our eyes.

This is where all of history is headed—for all who trust the love of Jesus.

So receive this love. And then share this love.

Don’t keep this love to yourself.

God wants this for us—and not just us.

So we have a tendency, if we’re not careful, to hear God’s Word and walk away saying, That was okay. That was a good sermon—and then just walk away and not do anything with what we’ve just heard.

More Bible knowledge.

And I’m guessing, when you think about it, there’s really not a lot of new Bible knowledge you’ve gotten today.

God loves you. I think many of you have heard that before.

But I’m praying that the Holy Spirit is taking that message and bringing it home to your heart in a fresh way—in your life and in others’ lives—in a way that I think should lead us to some action, even right now.

So I want to give you two practical takeaways, and both are going to involve your phone.

So if you’d be willing, I want to invite you to pull out your phone. And don’t be distracted by any notifications that are on there. Just stay focused.

But I’m thinking it would not make sense for us to read this passage and not reach out to someone right now.

I’m just assuming there’s at least one Samaritan woman or man in your world who right now would benefit from hearing that God loves them.

So not just you—them.

You obviously don’t have to do this. But if you’d be willing, I want to invite you, with your phone out, to think of one person you know in this moment who either doesn’t know Jesus personally or you’re not sure if they know Jesus personally.

And I want to challenge you—encourage you—to send them a simple text right now that just says:

“Hey, this may seem kind of random. I just want you to know I’m thinking about you. I’m praying for you. I’m thankful for you. And I just want you to know that God loves you.”

Obviously, share whatever the Lord puts on your heart.

So I’m going to put something on the screen if it helps you get started. But I obviously do not want this to feel cheesy, cringe, or inauthentic. I’m not asking you to text something that’s not genuine.

But I guess I am asking you to take a step of faith.

And in this moment, I’m just thinking—with the thousands of us who are gathered across our city right now—sending simple texts that reach out to one person God puts on our heart.

That might encourage them. That might lead to a gospel conversation with them. That might reinforce gospel conversations you’ve already had with them.

Maybe it’s as simple as saying, “Hey, I was thinking about you this morning. I’d love to get together and catch up.”

And then pray for that time—catching up—that you’d be able to boldly and compassionately share the good news of God’s love with that person.

So I just want to invite you right now—let’s do this.

And I’m going to do this in a second as soon as I stop talking.

Whoever God puts on our heart.

And while different ones of you, I hope, are doing this now, I’m guessing some of you who are not Christians might be thinking, This feels really cringe to me. In fact, I feel kind of targeted right now.

If you feel that way, I want to encourage you in two ways.

First, you are being targeted—by God.

He really does love you personally.

He really does love you so much that he sent Jesus to die on a cross for you so that you could have eternal life in him.

He wants you to have eternal life in him so badly.

So maybe in these couple moments here, while people are texting, this could be the moment when you realize that being here today—whatever location you’re in, this room or somewhere else—is not an accident.

You’re hearing this simple message. And you’re hearing God speak to your heart.

And I just want to encourage you to say yes to God—to say yes to Jesus and his love for you.

And at the same time, even if you’re not ready to place your faith in Jesus today, I’d put it this way:

Just assume for a second that this is true.

You may not believe it at this moment, but assume for a minute that it’s true—that God really does love you this much, and that eternal life really is only found in Jesus.

Wouldn’t you want someone who knows that to be intentional about sharing that with you?

When you think about it, they would really have to hate you not to share that with you.

How unloving would that be—to know that, to believe that, and then not tell you anything about it?

So even if you’re not ready to trust in God’s love for you in Jesus, maybe at least consider that someone who is sharing Jesus with you is doing so because they actually care about you.