Jesus’s Aggressive, Relentless, Surgical Love
00:00:00.000 | The following clip is taken from John Piper's sermon, "The Tragic Cost of Her
00:00:09.220 | Cavernous Thirst," preached on June 21st, 2009, a sermon on the text where Jesus
00:00:15.940 | meets the woman at the well in John 4, verses 16 to 26. Here's what Pastor John
00:00:20.280 | had to say. "Some kind of bondage and slavery that drives her. Now she is
00:00:28.040 | locked and he's gonna move in. He can move in by showing her, 'You are thirsty.
00:00:34.760 | You are so thirsty. Wake up! Wake up! You think it's all about men. You think it's
00:00:43.320 | all about romance. You think it's all about being embraced and held. You think
00:00:48.120 | it's all about having security. It's not about any of that. It's about me. It's
00:00:54.600 | about water and not sexually with me. Me, Messiah, Savior, Prophet, water. Your soul,
00:01:06.120 | your soul is made to drink deep, deep, deep satisfaction from Jesus. And if you're
00:01:16.680 | not, I know what you're doing. You're into a serial routine. Probably for most of
00:01:25.400 | you it's not sex. Some of you it is for sure. Just jumping from bed to bed. Think
00:01:37.480 | that's it? It goes so deep, just in the moment it's so, it's so water, so lye, and
00:01:46.560 | you know it the next morning. And you get harder and harder. We're learning about
00:01:52.320 | Jesus here. Compassion, aggressive, surgical, relentless love, knows
00:01:58.680 | everything about us. Isn't it good to be known? Painful as all get-out and good to
00:02:04.360 | be known by somebody. This kind of person anyway. He knows everything about you.
00:02:09.520 | Absolutely everything. Kinky stuff, he knows. Hidden stuff from your youth, he
00:02:16.080 | knows. Financial stuff, he knows. Thoughts, he knows. Feelings, he knows. Midnight
00:02:23.600 | stuff, he knows. He knows you completely. And he's the most important person in the
00:02:29.360 | universe. Do you know yourself? You're meeting yourself in this woman. The
00:02:35.120 | thirsts. One of the evidences that we are not drinking Jesus, either because you're
00:02:44.120 | an unbeliever and you've never even tasted, or because you're a believer and
00:02:48.600 | something has begun to lure you to another fountain, starting to go there, or
00:02:55.520 | you've just blocked him out because you've got some hidden thing you want to
00:02:59.520 | keep doing or whatever. One of the evidences of not drinking deeply from
00:03:05.880 | Jesus is the instability of constantly moving from one thing to the next,
00:03:12.040 | seeking to fill the void. You may be going through sexual partners. You may be
00:03:18.880 | going through friends. You may be going through jobs. You may be going through
00:03:27.200 | churches. Just one after the other. You may be going through hobbies, internet
00:03:33.760 | stuff, hobbies, games. You may be going through hairstyles. You may be going
00:03:39.720 | through wardrobes. You may be going through cars. You may be going through
00:03:46.440 | locations of where you live because there's no deeply contented identity in
00:03:57.320 | Christ. Deeply contented. Deeply satisfied. That's what water means. Living water is
00:04:06.200 | your soul is a cavern of desire. And I offer myself to you, Jesus says, as water
00:04:14.000 | that lives. It becomes a well. It just satisfies day after day. You get up with
00:04:19.760 | hungers and longings and soul achings in the morning. Come to me and you'll find
00:04:24.920 | stability of contented identity. And then you don't move around so much. Jump in
00:04:32.120 | here, jump in there, jump in here, jump in there. Crave, crave, crave, crave, crave,
00:04:36.840 | crave. Nothing's working. Oh, don't you love people who are so deep with Jesus
00:04:44.440 | they know where it's at. The water. They live by the fountain. They never go
00:04:51.800 | anywhere. They just live there. They're not jumping from job to job and wife to
00:04:57.840 | wife and girlfriend to girlfriend and car to car and hairstyle to hairstyle.
00:05:01.440 | They are so there. Here's the interesting thing about that. That sounds static,
00:05:06.160 | doesn't it? Baloney! It isn't static. Believe me, it isn't static. I don't mean
00:05:13.440 | that the Christian life with that kind of centered, deep, satisfied identity by
00:05:19.280 | the fountain, satisfied day after day, freshly with new water coming up from
00:05:25.720 | this friendship and this relationship, I do not mean this is static. There is
00:05:31.360 | a difference between confident movement of faith and craving movement of
00:05:38.720 | frustration. You got that? There is a difference between confident movement in
00:05:45.520 | faith and craving movement of frustration. "Got to move because this is not working.
00:05:52.200 | Here, move, move, move." Or, "This is so working, I'm taking it. I got a plan. I'm making
00:05:59.320 | something of my life. I'm not wasting it. I am moving to China. I'm moving to
00:06:02.600 | Ukraine. I'm moving to Southeast Asia. I am on the way because I got my feet on a
00:06:08.000 | rock and there's a fountain coming up out of this rock and it goes with me
00:06:11.560 | everywhere. It's Jesus, not any geographical location. So don't don't hear me say that
00:06:18.640 | the movement in life, you know, job to job and hairstyle to hairstyle and wife to
00:06:23.360 | wife and sex to sex and TV program to TV program, that the alternative is frozen.
00:06:28.240 | I got the fountain. You know that's not what I'm talking about. This fountain is
00:06:34.360 | really a moving fountain. It's like a waterfall. I've used that analogy before.
00:06:38.360 | Stay under it, it moves. Oh Jesus is a mover. He's gonna reach the nations. The
00:06:47.680 | fountain's on its way to the nations. You want to get drink deepest, go with him to
00:06:53.160 | the nations or the neighborhood. Magnificent, rich truth. That clip was
00:06:59.480 | taken from John Piper's sermon, "The Tragic Cost of Her Cavernous Thirst," which was
00:07:04.000 | preached on June 21st 2009. You can download the entire thing at DesiringGod.org.
00:07:08.480 | This clip was sent in to us by podcast listener Aaron Probonik. Thank
00:07:14.120 | you Aaron. Like Aaron, if you have a favorite John Piper sermon clip, please
00:07:17.560 | email us the name of the sermon and if possible the timestamp of when and where
00:07:22.200 | the clip occurs in the audio. Please put the phrase "sermon clip" in the subject
00:07:26.800 | line of an email and send it to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. We
00:07:32.440 | return on Monday and we welcome guest Francis Chan to the podcast. He will be
00:07:36.600 | joining me from San Francisco to answer a list of random questions on everything
00:07:40.280 | from seeking joy in Christ, to leadership, to marriage, parenting, and even dating.
00:07:45.640 | Should be fun. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John
00:07:49.240 | podcast.
00:07:51.720 | [BLANK_AUDIO]