Jesus Gives Living Water: Part 3

This will be part three of Jesus Gives Living Water. Jesus Gives Living Water. So I would like to invite you to please turn with me in your Bible to the Gospel of John. John chapter 4. We are at John chapter 4 and working our way through.

And I would like to read our text from verse 1 to verse 26. Verse 1 to verse 26. We will not finish this today. We'll pick it up, God willing, next Lord's Day as we move down the road. But this is a wonderful story that speaks of the great love of God and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

As Scripture says, the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. And this is definitely one of these wonderful stories that we have that's recorded in the Gospel of John that demonstrates and we see the grace of our God.

We see a Samaritan woman meets the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ in this. And we will eventually see that she is totally transformed. Excuse me. Let me begin to read this. Excuse me. Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, though Jesus himself did not baptize but his disciples, he left Judea and departed again to Galilee, but he needed to go through Samaria.

And so he came to a city of Samaria, which is called Shechar, near the plot of the ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, therefore being wearied from his journey, sat thus by.

The well.

And it was about the sixth hour. A woman of Samaria came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, Give me a drink. And for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. And then the woman of Samaria said to him, How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?

For the Jews have no dealings with the 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.

And the woman said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself and as well as his sons and his livestock?

And Jesus answered and said to her, Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.

The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw. And Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband, and come here. And the woman answered and said, I have no husband.

Jesus said to her, You have well said, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband, in that you spoke truly. And the woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

Our father is worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship. And Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the father.

You worship what you do not know. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and in truth, for the father is seeking such to worship him.

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things. And Jesus said to her, I who speak to you, am he.

May God bless the reading of his holy word from our ears to our hearts this morning. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we pray, speak. Speak, Lord, for your servant here. And we ask this for your honor and glory, in Jesus' name, amen.

The Gospel of John and the Purpose of Jesus' Encounter with the Samaritan Woman

For an opening, let me give you a wonderful and amazing, awesome truth by Pastor John MacArthur as I was studying this. I was digging into his commentary, and he has a wonderful footnote on this in paragraph concerning the great love of God given to us through Jesus Christ.

He says this, quote, the apostle John obviously understood the weighty evidence that confirmed Jesus' authenticity. In fact, the reason he wrote his gospel was to confirm the obvious, and that is that Jesus Christ is the son of God.

In John 20, verse 31. And it is in keeping with that purpose that John relates the story of Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman. He goes on to say this, the woman's reaction to Jesus is related, and John's record here strongly suggests that she embraced him as her Lord and Savior.

But her conversion is not really the main point of this passage. The central truth of this section is found in Jesus' revelation of himself as the Messiah in verse 26. He goes on to note, he did so here for the first time, and to a most unlikely non-Jew.

But why did he decide not to first declare his Messiahship to the most politically correct and influential target, the Jewish religious leaders? What a question. And he has a good answer. Listen to this.

So why choose to reveal that monumental truth to an obscure, despised, immoral Samaritan.

Woman?

The answer lies in the sweeping truth that it is in the matter of salvation that God is not one to show partiality.

I love that.

God is not one to show partiality. And Jesus' revelation of himself to this woman demonstrated that God's saving love knows no limitation. It transcends all barriers of race, gender, ethnicity, and religious tradition.

And in contrast to human love, divine love is indiscriminate and all-encompassing. In John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

That Jesus chose to make himself known first, first, not only to a Samaritan woman, but also to a woman who was really a stinging rebuke to members of Israel's religious elite. And MacArthur closes it with this in this section.

Who rejected him, the religious elite, rejected him even when he did reveal himself to them. I thought that was wonderful, a very wonderful observation and that's actually the obvious,.

Isn't it?

Because God loves the world in a general sense and he loves his people in a special sense, but it is an obvious truth that is overlooked, isn't it? God shows no partiality. And that's the kind of God he is.

He's there always willing. He does not delight in the death of the wicked, but he wills and desires all to come to the truth even though the scriptures are very plain in the fact that all will not, speaking of the whole world, will believe it.

If we believe that, that would be a universal salvation. We do not believe that. Jesus said it. He said that the way to hell is broad and wide and many there, many will go in that way, but few will find the narrow door and enter into heaven.

He made that very clear, didn't he? How it must grieve God that people do not come to him. Spurgeon had it right when he said salvation is all of God, but damnation is all of man. God will not be responsible for the damnation of men even though he does know who goes there or who is elected to not go and also to those who are elected to heaven.

It's hard for us to put that together, isn't it, in our mind because we have a hard time with understanding the justice of God, but God is just, folks, and he's righteous and he's fair. And he can, and as scripture says in Romans 9, he has mercy on whom he wills to have mercy and he has compassion on whom he wills compassion.

The Gospel, Reconciliation, and Eternal Life in Christ

Now we also need not to forget the gospel, and I'm going to start with the gospel here because the gospel is the good news because if you look at the book of Romans, that's the way Paul the apostle began and he gave the good news first and then later he gave.

The bad news.

But in order to understand the good news, we must understand the bad news, vice versa. But I'm going to quote to you what the apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 5, verse 6 -11, and listen, just let your soul just meditate and your mind meditate on this great truth.

And this is what Paul says, For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly, not the godly, the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.

But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us, much more than having now been justified by his blood. We shall be saved from the wrath through him.

For if we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son. Much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

Now that word reconciliation, beloved, that's what the gospel is about. God has reconciled us. A holy God has reconciled us who is just, merciful, but yes, completely righteous to himself through Jesus Christ his son.

That is the gift of God. Beloved, that is the good news, and that's what the good news is all about. He comes to save us from our sin, but also to come to save us from ourselves. And that's why he came.

He comes to give us eternal life, and it does not begin necessarily in heaven, it begins.

Here and now.

This is the life of God. This is the life that God imparts, to give us an eternal life in heaven. And I was explaining this to the children this morning as we were heading this, I said really, I said heaven would not be heaven, and I would not want to go to heaven if Jesus was not there.

You take Jesus out, I don't want to go to heaven. Pastor, how can you say something like that, because you're talking about this wonderful city of God, the celestial city, a place where there is no sin, and streets of gold, and I was explaining to the children this morning, if you look in Revelation, there is literally the gate of pearl, and there's gates on each side of the city, and the city of God is by measurement 1 ,500 miles high.

One pearl.

MacArthur said, I'd like to see the clam that pearl came out of. But God can create it, can't He? Now I want you to think about it, not 1 ,500 feet, that would be high. We're talking about 1 ,500 miles high, looking at the pearl.

But you take Christ out of there, and the Scriptures in Revelation says there's no need for the sun, because the glory of God the Lamb will be the light. He will lighten up that city, and think of it, jewels, and rubies, and diamonds, and gold, and that luxurious city of God, and the glory of God will be bouncing off and reflecting off all that, and lighting up the whole entire city of God.

That's just one of the benefits, that Christ is all in all. And He's the reason, and I told the children, as we were talking about this on the way here this morning, I said, children, I tell you why Jesus is that important, and He's the only one that's worthy, is because He's the one that died for you.

He is the one who gave His life for you, that you may have everlasting life. Now beloved, that's the great love of God, and by the way, it's the great love of the Father, given as the gift of His Son, not just to the righteous, but to the unrighteous.

To the ungodly, to the enemies of God, to those who hate Him, to those who blaspheme Him, to reconcile them to Himself. And here in our text, John chapter 4, we see Jesus doing just that. He's the great master soul winner.

By divine appointment, as we have seen, Christ is motivated by the love of God. And we see that Jesus, being the love of God Himself, incarnate in flesh, He reaches out to one of His lost sheep, and here she is, a Samaritan woman, a half-breed, a reject.

He reaches out to her in great love. And to do that, Jesus begins a conversation with a very simple comment, and He says, give me a drink, give me a drink. So Jesus, the master evangelist, uses this occasion to begin a life-changing encounter with the Samaritan woman.

We've already covered verse 1 to verse 8. Let's pick up at verse 9. Listen to what the Word of God says. Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, how is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?

For Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. Now think of this. The Samaritan woman knows the cultural norms of that day. She knows that men don't talk to women. Actually, especially the Samaritans, if a Jew would even cross the path, they would avoid them at all costs.

As a matter of fact, more than likely, when the disciples went into the city of Samaria to get food for themselves and the Lord, they probably passed this woman as she was heading to Jacob's well, and they probably avoided her and put a good distance between themselves.

And she knows here also that not only that men don't talk to women in that day, especially Jewish rabbis don't have anything to do with the half-breed Samaritan period, let alone a Samaritan. Now this was absolutely shocking and surprising to her.

That's exactly the reason why she says here in this text, how is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?

She knew this.

Commentator William Barclay says this concerning this text. He says, the strict rabbis forbade a rabbi to greet a woman in public. A rabbi might not even speak to his own wife or daughter or even sister in public.

There were even Pharisees who were called, quote, the bruised and bleeding Pharisees because they shut their eyes when they saw a woman on the street, and so they walked into walls and houses, end quote.

Wow, could you imagine seeing that? Well, that's exactly what happened in that day. There was no affiliation between the Jews and the Samaritans, there was bitterness and resentment. Verse 10 says this, we have the revelation which is given, and Jesus knows exactly how to answer her.

Jesus answered and said to her, notice what he says, if you knew the gift of God, 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.

Now, think about this, a person at that time understood living water to be fresh, springing water bubbling up out of the ground. The Jews knew something of this, but can I tell you, the Samaritans really didn't know.

Why did I say that? Because if you remember, we're studying this, the Samaritans being Gentile, Assyrian, and Jew mixed, only accepted the Pentateuch as the revelation of God. That is as far as they went.

They did not read the prophets, and the prophets have much to say about living water. Listen to Jeremiah the prophet in chapter 2 verse 13, and he speaks about living water and what it says about what God says about living water through Jeremiah.

He says this, for my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Two evils, two evils, right here.

First Israel had abandoned the Lord, Yahweh, who is the source of spiritual salvation and sustenance. The second evil, first of all, that's pretty bad to forget the Lord, to abandon God, because God is the source of living water and salvation.

The second evil is Israel turned to idolatrous objects of trust. They made themselves idols, and the prophet Jeremiah compared these with underground water storages, devices for rain water, which were broken, and they let water seep out, thus proving completely useless.

That's exactly what Jeremiah is speaking of. Now a Jew would understand this, but the Sabaritan would really not understand what it means about living water. Now, as I read that, did it not cross your mind that nothing has changed in the respect to the two evils?

The depravity of man is the same. God has not changed, and in that sense, in man's depravity, that has not changed as well. This really, let me kind of change gears a little bit, this is really the question we all have for our unsaved family and friends, and I know you feel the same pain as I do as you reach out to those that do not know the Lord in your family, and who, and I think about what Jesus says to her, if you knew the gift of God, if you knew, what does Scripture.

Say?

My people perish because of lack of knowledge. No knowledge of God. Who it is that says to you, give me a drink? You would have asked Him, Jesus says, and He would have given you living water. Oh, we pray for our, and long for the salvation of our family and our friends, don't we?

We long for them to come to the Lord Jesus Christ and believe on Christ, and to repent and turn from their wicked ways. We love and long to see them to come to Christ and be changed, because eternal, eternity is at stake.

Now to come to the Lord Jesus Christ, we see also in their lives, there is a terrible disaster, there is a mess like this woman at Samaria, addictions upon addictions, don't we? Don't we see this? It grieves us, and how much more does it grieve God, who is the Creator, the Savior and Redeemer?

They have addictions, they're idolatrous, adulterous, adultery, they're a slave to sin, and they can't break free within their own power. No, they cannot do it within their own willpower, that will not do.

And if only they knew the gift of God, like Jesus says here, if only you knew the gift of God, think about that. Jesus Christ is that gift. He is the gift of God. If only they would hear Him and believe and repent.

Add to that, if only they knew who it was speaking to them. Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice and they follow me. Now have you noticed, as I was speaking that to you, that you and I cannot make anyone or force anyone come to Christ.

And by the way, God doesn't force Himself against people's will. The way it works through the power of the Holy Spirit, God literally makes them willing. He causes that to happen because it's a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit.

You can read that in Ezekiel. God time and time again speaks that He is the one that causes that. You can go with me very quickly, I like to just reference this, I don't have this in my notes, but this is such an important, very important text that we need to understand about conversion, about regeneration, regeneration actually, and then there's conversion.

But if you go to Ezekiel 36, this is how God does this. And this is what is spoken of here. And water is always symbolic of cleansing, isn't it? Like external baptism, symbolic of cleansing. And the cleansing that it symbolizes is the cleansing that happens within.

It's an external act that doesn't save us, by the way, but it re-represents what has happened on the inside. Ezekiel 36, listen to the word of the Lord, verse 22. Therefore, say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for my holy name's sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went.

I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst, and the nations shall know that I am the Lord, says the Lord God, when I am hallowed in you before their eyes.

Notice how many times God says, I will, folks.

Listen to this.

Verse 24. In verse 23, I already said, I will sanctify my great name. Then in verse 24, I will take you from among the nations and gather you out of the countries and bring you into your own land. Verse 25, then I will, this is God, sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean.

I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Verse 26, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you again. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and will give you a heart of flesh again.

Verse 27, I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you will keep my judgments and do them. Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers and you shall be my people and I will be your God.

Have you noticed how many times God says, I will? Verse 23, I will sanctify my great name. Verse 24, I will take you from among the nations. Verse 25, I will sprinkle water on you. I will cleanse you.

Verse 26, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh. I will put my spirit within you. Time and time again, God does the work. How can anybody deny that it's not a supernatural work of God?

It is absolutely that. It's not of our own free will, even though the offer is to those that are to whosoever.

Will.

I do not deny that, but it must be God and it is all of God that does the transforming.

Work.

I don't see how anyone would deny that. Now, a lot of times we try to figure out the details of how this all works, but don't try to do that because God's the one that's in charge. Just know that He does it, right?

But the Bible says much about it. And we just read a very important passage on that text. Now, add to all that, if only they knew, not only the gift of God, but who it was speaking to them. The scripture says, no one can come to the Father unless the Father who sent me, Jesus speaks, draws him.

You know, did you know that word draw in the Greek could be translated drag, drag, literally drag. The bottom line is that salvation, that we cannot save anyone, folks, and I know you.

Know this.

It is entirely, completely a work of the Holy Spirit of God. Salvation is of the Lord.

It's God's doing.

Even the preached word, as powerful as the word of God is, the Spirit of God must take the letter and give life to it. Paul said that. The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. It's the Spirit of God that must do the regenerating work within the heart of man.

It's God's working in and through the Lord Jesus Christ and His work upon the cross. Now, C. H. Spurgeon says this at verse 10. Let me read verse 10, and again, if you knew the gift of God and who it is, it says to you, give me a drink.

You would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water. I love what Spurgeon says, if you knew the gift of God. He says this, see the deadly misshift of ignorance concerning spiritual things?

If she had known, she would have asked, and Christ would have given. But the first link was missing, and therefore the rest of the chain was not drawn on. Sometimes, all people need is a little wise instruction, and they will then trust the Lord and Savior by the work of the Spirit.

God grant that we may always be ready to give it. Some need much more than that, but Christ could truly say to this Samaritan woman, if you had known, you would have asked, and I would have given. And that end quote right there.

But I was thinking of Matthew, turn with me to Matthew chapter 7. This is a wonderful, wonderful verse. The Sermon on the Mount, the Lord Jesus Christ is teaching His disciples. And this is what He says concerning asking, seeking, and knocking.

You're familiar with that, aren't you? But He keeps saying it. He says it. You keep asking, you keep seeking, you keep knocking. Verse 7 of chapter 7, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find.

Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds. To him who knocks, it will be opened. Or what man, listen to this question here, what man is there among you, who, if his son asks for bread, will he give him a stone?

Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? Well the answer, let me stop right there, the answer is obvious, no, by no means. Notice what Jesus says in verse 11. If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more?

Don't you love that? How much more will your Father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask.

Him?

Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. So the Lord is there, and as James says, we have not because we ask not, and when we do ask, we ask for wrong motives.

We must make sure our motives are right. So that's a wonderful text as well. Now how gracious and how giving is God? Now back to John, let's look at verse 11 and 12. Here we sense that she is still on the physical plane and doesn't yet get that Jesus is talking about the spiritual.

He says this, the woman said to her, sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well.

Is deep.

Where do you get that living water? Now he's got her attention on living water now, but remember this whole conversation started because of water. I was kind of thinking a little bit, isn't so many people in this world magnetically drawn to water?

They love to go by the seaside. My daughter, Elizabeth, my new son-in-law just came back from close around the Caribbean to the Virgin Islands, and they said the water is absolutely gorgeous. Ben and my other daughter, she's not here today, went there as well on their honeymoon.

Beautiful, beautiful water.

You see, it's so crystal clear. People love to see the water. Such a gift that God has given. This should remind us of the life-given water that Jesus gives, magnetically drawn to it. But unfortunately because of men's depravity, they don't think of that, do they?

Because they're dead in their sins. They don't see it for as it is. She asked, where then do you get that living water? Well think of it, she's still thinking on the physical, folks. And I love how Jesus in his wisdom handles her question about Jacob, actually.

He ignores it as it is just, he detours her from the main point. You might have noticed it, very easy to talk about religion, but people get quite uncomfortable when you bring up the Lord Jesus Christ.

You start talking about repentance and sin, people get very, very uncomfortable. I notice this when we're out on the streets reaching out to people. Oh they can talk to you all day about religion, but mention Jesus and their personal sin.

In a loving way, you need to repent and turn from it. Turn from your wicked ways and people automatically say, I gotta go. I got something else to do.

They don't want to hear it.

It's just the natural nature of man's depravity. Verse 13 and 14 is really the very heart of the soul of the text. Jesus answered and said to her, verse 14, whoever drinks of this water, and it speaks about Jacob's water, the well there, will thirst again.

But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst, but the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting.

Life.

Now notice what he's offering to her, a fountain of living water springing up into everlasting life. It makes me think also of Solomon who wrote in Ecclesiastes that God has put eternity in our hearts, meaning that each one of us that are born has a God-shaped cavity, a hole, within our heart because God has put eternity within our hearts.

One person that I work with, and he wanted to debate me about this, he said, you know, all people is like, don't have a soul. And I said, I've disproved that now because the Word of God says when God made man, he made him a living soul.

Why?

Because he breathed in him the breath of life. You and I have the breath of life in us today. Every single person on the face of this earth is a living soul. Eternity is in their hearts. This one particular guy, like many others, and they're teaching this false and damnable teaching to our children that we just evolved and there's no soul, they're just like the animals that die.

And this is the lies that has come within the teaching of public school and so forth. But you go back to the Bible, and once they taught this years back, the Scriptures, the truth that man is a living soul.

He will live.

You and I will live forever somewhere, whether it be eternal hell or eternal heaven. So when a person dies, the Scripture says it is once appointed for man to die, and after that the judgment. That's Scripture.

Now Ecclesiastes says God has put eternity in his heart. I like what the old church father Augustine said, Oh Lord, you have made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in thee.

Man will not get any soul rest until he comes to Christ. And that's why Jesus says, Come unto me all you labor and heavy laden, I will give you.

Rest.

Rest for your souls. He's not talking about physical rest. He's talking about people that were burdened with the law, the yoke of the law. That law keeping was so burden heavy on them, and Jesus says, I can relieve you from the.

Yoke of the law.

You come to me, I have, why? Because Jesus kept the law. He fulfilled the law. And we throw ourselves on Christ and know that Christ is all in all to us because he gives us soul rest. Praise his name.

Now, there's something else I'd like to bring to your attention here, because the water that he speaks of in Jacob's. Well, he said, you drink that water, you will thirst.

You will thirst.

The world cannot satisfy us. The waters of this world cannot, the wells of this world cannot and will never satisfy. John, first John chapter two, verse 15 to 17 says this, do not love the world. That's a command.

This is a command. Do not love the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. Notice he's speaking much about love here. He speaks about the love of God, but he speaks also about the love of the world.

Then he says, for all that is in the world, the lust or you could say the desires, the desires of the flesh, the lust, the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the father, but is of the world.

What is he, what does he say in verse 17? And the world is passing away. It's passing away and the lust of it. But here's the point, but he who does the will of God abides forever. That's the point. That's the truth.

That's the truth that John wants the people of God to get. Now how relevant is that truth? You see it all about us. People the lust of the flesh, the desires, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. These are the three enemies of Christianity.

The father and the son and the Holy Spirit, the three in one, and Jesus Christ and by the father sending Christ and through the Holy Spirit as Christ went into the wilderness defeated all three of these enemies as a man full of the Holy Ghost.

Praise his name. This is it. MacArthur comments here on this. I want to give you a comment where he says this about the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life. He says, although John often repeats the importance of love, he says, and that God is love, he also reveals that God hates a certain type of love, the love of the world.