Dr. Charles Stanley: Are you one of those persons who's

feeling hopeless?

Nobody cares; nobody's interested in you.

You've had all kind of experiences.

You've had all kind of things and you've been with all kind of

people, but somehow there's something missing in your life.

male announcer: Today on "In Touch," "When All Hope is Gone."

Dr. Stanley: The word hope is a very, very important word.

It's a word of optimism, a word of cheerfulness, expectation.

All of us need hope about many different things in life.

And when you have hope, you do anticipate; you expect; you look

forward to something.

When you have no hope, there's a sense of dread.

You find yourself in the muck and mire of something that you

can't put your finger on.

Where is my hope?

In other words, what am I living for?

And there are multitudes of people today who do not have any

hope.

They don't have any hope about their marriage.

They have no hope about their children.

They have no hope about their health, about their finances,

about their future, about their job, their profession.

They have no hope about life itself, and they have no hope

about life after death.

They have no hope about eternity.

They're living in the muck and mire of this sense of existence,

but going nowhere.

They're just there.

That's never the intent of Almighty God.

He intends for us to have goals in our life; to have a sense of

confidence and assurance; and many people don't have it.

And what I want to talk about in this message

is a beautiful example of a person who absolutely was hopeless.

There was nothing about their life that gave them hope.

And I trust that you will identify with it because it has

a wonderful ending, but a very bad beginning.

So if you'll turn if you will in your Bible to John chapter four,

and let's read a few verses of this chapter.

Let's start with this first verse to give you a little

background.

All right?

"Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard

that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than

John, although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples

were," and I thought this was, this said something about Jesus.

That is, He didn't want to take away from anything about John.

He left Judea and went away again into Galilee.

And He had to pass through Samaria.

He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar,

near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph:

And Jacob's well was there.

So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the

well.

It was about the sixth hour."

Or about twelve o'clock noon, "There came a woman of Samaria

to draw water.

Jesus said to her, 'Give Me a drink.'

For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him,

'How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink

since I am a Samaritan woman?' For Jews have no dealings with

Samaritans.

Jesus answered and said to her, 'If you knew the gift of God,

and who it is who says to you, "Give Me a drink,"

you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.'

She said to Him, 'Sir, You have nothing to draw with

and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water?

You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave

us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his

cattle?' Jesus answered and said to her,

'Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again;

but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never

thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him

a well of water springing up into eternal life.'

The woman said to Him, 'Sir, give me this water,

so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.'"

This is one of the most beautiful stories in the Bible

of people who are hopeless and helpless,

don't have anywhere

to turn. There's nothing good about it.

And I want you to look at this woman for a moment and see what

hopelessness is all about; and what can happen in a person's

life when they become hopeless.

Sometimes people are hopeless because of what they've done.

Because the way they've lived; because

decisions that they've made.

And then sometimes it's not always that person's fault.

And so, when I think about this woman, I want to give you a

little description of her.

Number one, she'd been married five times; and

she was living in an adulterous situation, immoral situation with a man she

was living with at that particular time.

And, of course, having been married five times,

she had suffered a lot of difficulty and hardship with these first five

men or they would have still been there.

She must have been a pretty good-looking gal to have

attracted five men.

And so there she was.

And one of the problems though is that she'd endured terrible

rejection from the community.

To have been married five times in a small community, she was

the talk of the community.

There was nothing they could say good about her.

What kind of woman is this who has been married five times and

divorced and now she decided just to live with this guy and

not even be married to him.

And so she seems to have been trapped by this insatiable

sexual desire to have her needs met or to

meet somebody else's needs.

She was emotionally empty.

To be married five times, nothing works emotionally.

So she was empty; and seemingly failed to meet the needs of

these lovers of hers.

And so she felt very morally dirty.

You ever felt that-a-way?

Am I talking to somebody who feels morally dirty?

That because of decisions that you've made in your life, you

feel dirty spiritually.

You feel dirty emotionally.

You could be in a situation just as badly as she was.

You've tried it all and nothing worked.

You've been there and it didn't make any difference.

You've been loved by this one and loved by that one and hated

by this one and hated by the other, and used by all of them,

and nothing satisfied you.

You don't have anywhere to go.

All of your goals and dreams have been shattered; and the

truth is, you don't have anything to hope for.

At this point in your life, your sinfulness, your disobedience or

your rebellion, you turned off God a long time ago.

So where are you in life?

You're lost.

It's dark, dingy, dismal; and there you are.

It's like being in a swamp emotionally.

There's nothing there that is attractive to you.

And so you've sort of given up.

But given up to what?

Given up, why?

And given up when.

Those are the things you have to think about.

And I think there are many women today and men who have no hope.

This is the reason some people commit crime.

They can't see any hope of doing anything.

At least in prison you could have friends.

At least in prison, you've got

three meals a day and a place to eat and you can even watch TV.

There are a lot of people who are very, very hopeless.

And we're living in a time when more people are hopeless.

And this is why they cross borders.

This is why they do anything

to find a little hope and a little help.

And yet even that doesn't work.

And so this is where she was at this point.

And then a personal encounter with Jesus Christ

radically changed her life.

And it's radically changing people's lives today.

And so when you think about who she was and what was going on in

her life at this particular point, she's coming to the well

to draw water for the day, but she's coming at noontime, which

was not the right time.

But she came at noontime because the women didn't want to be

around her, they ostracized her, and it just made her feel worse

to try to be there when everybody else was there.

So in the middle of the day, here she comes for water.

And strangely, this man is sitting there.

He sent His disciples into town to buy food.

And looking at Him and knowing that He was a Jew and she was a

Samaritan, she was shocked when He said,

Give me a drink of water.

And her response was, What do You mean,

give You a drink of water?

You're a Jew; I'm a Samaritan.

Jews and Samaritans do not have anything to do with each other.

And You certainly wouldn't expect me to draw

Your water for You.

And Jesus in His quiet and loving way,

began a conversation with her.

And, all of a sudden, she realized that the barriers were

coming down within her; because the barrier was there.

First of all, she was talking to a man alone.

That in itself was enough. The fact that He was a Jew and she was a Samaritan, all of

those barriers were coming down.

She couldn't tell you why.

She just knew that there was something about Him that

attracted her that had nothing to do with what usually

attracted her, something physical.

And she began to listen.

And, "Jesus said to her, 'Give Me a drink,'" that's what

started the conversation.

And, He said to her, He said, You give me a drink and I'll

give you a drink of living water.

And so, Jesus began to talk with her and they began to chat and

so Jesus distinguished between this well water and the other

water that He was talking about.

And so she enthusiastically asked Him for it.

And so, when He had described it, she, "The woman said to Him,

'Sir,'" listen to that, she--how she addressed Him, "Sir, give me

this water, I will not be thirsty nor come all the way

here again."

And then, “Jesus said to her," That sort of disrupted the

conversation because everything was moving right along and He

was talking about living water and then all of a sudden He,

"said, 'Call your husband,'" oh my, messed the conversation up

terrible.

And so, "Call your husband," and she told Him the truth.

She said, I don't have a husband.

He said, watch this, You're correct; you don't.

But you have had five.

And you're living with a man now who is not your husband.

But watch how He said that.

He did not condemn her.

He said, You're right; you don't have one, but you're living with

one who is not your husband.

Notice how Jesus changed that conversation.

Not by criticizing her, but by asking her a question.

And so what He's doing, He's leading her to realize where she

is emotionally, where she is physically, where she is

spiritually.

Now, what she did is what a lot of people do today.

When you start talking to them about the Lord, all of a sudden

they want to change the subject.

So if you'll notice what happens when she said that, "The woman

said, 'Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.'"

And then she said, "Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and

you people say that," and she changed the subject.

She wanted to start talking about worship; Jesus didn't want

to talk about that.

He did give her a little explanation here and there, but

He said, I want to tell you about My water.