SATISFACTION
A.McBride
This is a wonderful proposition on the part of God. He is prepared to feed us, give us something to drink, something that will satisfy. Think of God addressing Himself to you. Yes, to you, and me: "Ho, every one that thirsteth". Think of God, as it were, opening His heart to you. Are you going to let that message go over your head? Are you going to pass it by? God in His wonderful goodness is speaking to a sin-parched world. He is saying "Ho, every one that thirsteth". It is like the call of the preacher, God calling your attention, God speaking "once, and twice", Job 33: 14. Think of God's feelings in the gospel: "Ho, every one that thirsteth". Are you thirsting, friend? Can you really say that you are satisfied? How can you be satisfied without Christ? The heart of every man, woman and child is so made by God that it is incapable of being satisfied without Christ.
One of our spiritual fathers said that man never secures his own happiness (see F.E.R. Vol.7, p.210). Legislation is coming in all around us to make more room for leisure and such things. Money is being poured into the leisure industry, man allegedly catering for his own happiness. What is the result? Just a continuation of the misery and dissatisfaction. All around us, industrially and in every other way, there is nothing but dissatisfaction. The god of this world will keep it that way because he is not capable of providing the satisfaction that would meet the need of any man or woman or boy or girl. There is only One who can do that, and that is God Himself, and He presents Christ as the answer to every problem of man - your problem, my problem, your soul-sickness, my soul-sickness. God presents Jesus, the blessed Saviour, as the answer for all, and in this wonderful way: "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye... buy, and eat: yea, come, buy wine and milk". Think of that! "Come ye to the waters" - that is the flow of God in grace to man, in wonderful grace. Are you coming? He says "Come ye buy, and eat". Find something for your soul, something for your constitution, something to refresh and build you up, to give you life.
The woman in John 4 was thirsting. She came to the well. She found Jesus there. She came to the well but she found a different kind of water from what she came for originally. She was what men would call a bad woman. She was so ashamed of herself that she did not come at the time when others came to the well. It was customary, I understand, in those days that the women went to the well at a certain time of day. But this woman obviously had not gone at that time. Maybe she was a social outcast. I do not know what your standing in society is, but there she was. She came to that well. There was a Man sitting at the well. He began to speak to her. Jesus is anxious to draw near to you. It says "He must needs pass through Samaria", John 4: 4. Think of the way the Lord Jesus took just to meet that needy soul. He sat there waiting patiently for her coming. Then He began to speak to her. I do not know whether John gives us the whole conversation. He gives the essentials of it anyway. But there was something wrought out in the soul of that woman that would be entirely between her and Christ.
I wonder if you have come to this, come to some experience of coming into the presence of Jesus, finding that only He can satisfy you? She thought that she would get satisfaction in that well. She brought her pitcher and was ready to draw the water out of the well. But the Lord says "Every one who drinks of this water shall thirst again" (v. 13). If you keep on the way in which you are going, you will thirst again. Even although you may be coming to the meetings, you will thirst again unless you have had a personal transaction with the Lord Jesus. Coming to the meetings in itself is fine; keep coming, but you must come to know the Saviour for yourself. He said to that woman "Whosoever drinks of the water which I shall give him shall never thirst for ever " (v 14). It is more than the water. It is the drinking. It is the appropriation, the partaking of it, the receiving of it from the hand of Jesus. Have you had a touch from Jesus? Have you come into His presence as a sinner? Do not be afraid to tell the Lord Jesus that you are a sinner. You can tell Him anything. Some things you might not want to tell even to your father or your mother. Some things you would not even tell your best friend, but you can tell Jesus. He knows it anyway. He knows the state of your soul. He knows the bitterness, He knows the dissatisfaction, the uncertainty, the sense of guilt that is there at times. He knows what your innermost thoughts are. You can come to Jesus freely.
There He was, sitting at that well. I think the very fact that He sat at the well would indicate that He had a friendly attitude towards this woman. He was sitting, not standing or towering over her or confronting her, just sitting there. I think it stresses the availability of Jesus to a needy soul, and He is available to you. Oh yes, He is in heaven, He is not sitting at a well now, but He is just as available. When you get down on your knees and just turn your heart to the Lord and speak to Him either audibly or inaudibly, you have an immediate access into His presence. He is listening, ready to fill you with the refreshment of the sense of your sins forgiven. The woman drank of that water. She left her own waterpot. She had had enough of that. She found Christ and He filled her heart. 'None, none but Christ can satisfy'. Are you satisfied with Christ? Have you found the blessed Saviour? And has He found you?
The woman went away into the city and said "Come, see a man" (v 29). She became a preacher, an evangelist. "Come, see a man who told me all things I had ever done". She had no more secrets, no more sense of shame or anything of that kind. She was satisfied with Christ. He had met every need.
In Isaiah 55 it says "Come ye... without money". Even if you have no money, come and buy. I think it is to stress the importance of a transaction. It is not that you have anything you can contribute. You come in all your need, in all your poverty, in all the depth of your longing for satisfaction, for forgiveness. Come as you are, but come and buy; that is, have a transaction with Jesus. He is the blessed One who has paid the price. He has paid the awful debt. That debt was paid at Calvary's cross by a blessed suffering Saviour as He took on Himself, holy sinless One that He was, the whole weight of God's judgment against sin. "Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us, that we might become God's righteousness in him", 2 Cor 5: 21. Have you found that Jesus has met your need on the cross? And more! On that cross He has met the claims of God in respect of sin. He has satisfied God. It is a wonderful thing to be able to preach that. The claims of God's throne have been satisfied. Every attribute of God has been met, every requirement of His divine nature has been glorified in the sacrifice of that blessed One, Jesus our Saviour. God is satisfied and He has given the proof of it in that He has raised Him from among the dead. Do you know that the resurrection of Jesus is the proof that atonement has been made, that the claims of God have been met? The blood of Jesus has satisfied God, and the judgment of God against man in death has been fully met. God has raised Him from among the dead and put Him at His right hand, a blessed Saviour for you and me. Are you coming? "Come ye, buy, and eat: yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price". What blessing God would give you! He is not simply bringing forward to you His righteousness and your unrighteousness. No! God in wonderful grace is meeting it with His own supply. "Eat". What food you can eat! Wine and milk - the joy of satisfaction. Wine would speak of the joy the gospel would bring into your soul. Milk would speak of the sustenance that would build you up. Children are given milk to build up their constitution. God does that in the gospel. He presents Christ that we may feed upon that blessed One, to feed on Him as the One who came so near to display God in love.
The man in Luke 10 had wounds and the Samaritan came to him where he was "and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine" (v 34). The Lord Jesus knows how to meet your need. He will do more than just meet your need. He will fill you with joy, give you a sense of the joy that is in the heart of God a sense by the Spirit of the blessedness of what it is to come into relationship with Him. I suppose the man on the Jericho road was typical of so many of us, brought up in a Christian household. He was at Jerusalem but he wanted the world, he wanted something else. He left there and went down on the Jericho road and was met by robbers. He found the awfulness of what the world is. It would strip you of every vestige of respectability. They left him in a half-dead state. The priest and the Levite passed him by, but the Samaritan, as he journeyed, came up to where he was. Jesus comes to where you are in all your need, and He would draw near to you tonight. He "bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine"; that is, he brought in a sense of comfort, of relief. What a relief it is to know your sins forgiven! If you have never had that experience, I trust you will soon have it, that you will know the relief and comfort of knowing your sins forgiven. The Saviour can soothe you, can give you a sense that He has borne everything for you.
What a way He took to come to you! What joy springs up in your heart, the first flush of joy after you are converted! "Pouring in oil and wine; and having put him on his own beast, took him to the inn and took care of him". God proposes these wonderful things in the gospel. The impression from this scripture is that the heart of God is full. Why keep going on the way you are, when there is a wonderful answer in Christ? In John 7 it says "In the last, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried saying" (v 37). They had been having a feast and they had had it for three days and still were not satisfied. They were not satisfied because they had not invited Jesus. On the last day He was standing there calling on those who thirst, giving them a promise. "If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink". That is like God. "Ho, every one that thirsteth". "Jesus stood and cried". He was bypassed by the whole system of the world, by all these religious leaders who had their feast of emptiness for three days, but there He was standing, crying "If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He that believes on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water". How they flowed out of the woman in John 4! "Come, see a man", she said. I trust that each one here will come to Jesus and find that in Him there is satisfaction. Come into the blessing that God would give you. Come and drink and, by the Spirit, out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water. That means that in your life there is an answer to the gospel, there is a change in your life. Your life is changed when you come to Christ and receive the Holy Spirit.
Not only is God proposing forgiveness of sins, but He is also ready to give you the gift of the Holy Spirit. He says "I will pour my Spirit... and my blessing", Isa 44: 3. The heart of God would pour out His Spirit. In John 7 the intention is that the Spirit is received in the heart to seal the work of Christ, so that there is an outflowing from satisfied hearts of rivers of living water. May you enjoy these things; may you find satisfaction in Christ, for His Name's sake!
GRANGEMOUTH
14 January 1979