# 104 What "Living Water" Actually Meant to the First Jews + Dr. Chris Lohrstorfer

Living Water and Jesus’ Claim to Divine Kingship

I think maybe some of us have heard the term living water. Today I have Dr. R. Chris Lestorfer. What did everyone in the room think? Did they think magic?

They understood Jesus as he's claiming to be Yahweh who's come to bring a kingdom where there's gonna be water flowing. That's a pretty bold claim. Some of them were convinced he was the Messiah right there.

They, you're saying that when he did that, people were like. Is this the Christ? This would be something to witness. He said this about the spirit. What does he mean by that? Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking.

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My name's Cassian Bellino and I am your host. I think maybe some of us have heard the term living water. Maybe we were just in church and we heard the story about the woman at the well. Today I wanna understand how did she understand God's words?

Because of course we get to benefit from kind of explaining it today, living waters, everlasting life, eternal life, being saved, salvation. But what did she hear when he stood up at a festival and he said that if you drink from me, you'll never thirst again?

What did everyone in the room think? Did they think magic? I wanna go back then. I wanna go back to see if I was in that room culturally, contextually, what would I be thinking? And how much of that is alluding to the Old Testament?

Like what is the context here? Because I feel like I'm just not sure how it would have been received. Today I have Dr. R. Chris Lestorfer is the Vice President of Academic Affairs and Assistant Professor of Wesleyan Theology at Wesley Biblical Seminary.

He has over 25 years of experience in Christian higher education and has served as both the professor and academic administrator specializing in Wesleyan theology, biblical interpretations and ministerial formation.

Welcome to the show, Dr. Chris Lestorfer. Thank you, ma 'am. Good to be with you. I'm so excited that before we jumped on, you said you were able to jump into this so much deeper. How did you even begin to understand living waters and know that as a concept?

Well, it's very interesting because I've done a lot of work in research in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and just thinking that through, which kind of scares everybody,.

But that's how I did it. I dove in through that. Okay, so you feel, you know, with the Holy Spirit and with living waters, there's a bit of an overlap?

Absolutely, in chapter seven, he defines it as such. John does, John chapter seven.

The Samaritan Woman, Jewish-Samaritan Conflict, and John’s Gospel

Well, I wanna examine two different chapters and you kind of said that it's mentioned throughout the gospel of John, but first starting with the woman at the well. And like, this is what makes this podcast great is I get to do what I've always wanted to do and every time they talk about the woman at the well, the woman at the well in church, I wanna raise my hand.

And now that I have you, I'm gonna raise my hand and just kind of understand, we get to John four, seven through 15. And it's that story about, you know, Jesus, when a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, will you give me a drink?

And because his disciples had gone to get food, the Samaritan woman said to him, you're a Jew, and think, and I am a Samaritan woman, how could you ask me for a drink? Because Jews do not associate with Samaritans.

But Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, this is the message version, by the way, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

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

Jesus answered, everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

The woman said to him, sir, give me this water so that I don't get thirsty, so I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. Very practical woman, I would also ask for that. What's happening in John?

Like, where is Jesus that he's even in Samaria?

Yeah, so Jesus is, of course, he's from the north and he's got to go south. I have a, I'm from Indiana and I live in Mississippi and I have a thing on my desk that says I wasn't born in the south, but I got here as fast as I could.

So maybe Jesus is doing the same thing. But there's something interesting about that because the northern kingdom of Samaria, they were kind of what some people, this is kind of a crass term, but half-breed Jews of sorts.

They were sort of Jewish, but not fully Jewish. Okay. And so what happens is, and this actually plays back into the intertestamental period, the Maccabean Revolt, if you know anything about that. No, I don't know anything about that.

Oh yeah, so this is huge in the New Testament. The New Testament has to be seen in light of the Maccabean Revolt. So the Greek culture was being, with Alexander the Great, he wanted everybody in his vast empire to be Greek.

And so after he dies, his kingdom is split into four parts. And the guys who have the part where Palestine and Israel is, those guys were forcing the Jews to become Greek. And so the Jewish priest decided to rebel against that and they went to war against the Greeks to fight.

It's called the Maccabean Revolt. They were called Maccabean. Is this when the Septuagint was written? Septuagint was translated before that, but in that time period, yes. It was in that time period. But the Maccabean Revolt resulted in the Sadducees and the Pharisees.

Oh. Yeah. I didn't know that. Because they were at war with each other. There were like 300, 400 Pharisees crucified on one day. And so what the result was, was that they both could rule together. And that's what caused the, that's what made the Sanhedrin was all that happened.

Now with the Maccabean Revolt, there was a big distinguishing between the Greek culture and the Hebrew culture. They did not like Greeks. That plays out in the New Testament as well, in the Book of Acts.

But here in John, he's going, and it says he had to go through Samaria. Actually, he didn't have to go because most Jews went around Samaria. They didn't want to go through it. The Samaritans were seen as idolaters.

They were seen as idolaters. If you remember in the Old Testament, when the Northern Kingdom is taken away by the Assyrians, they replaced the people with foreigners. Okay. And those foreigners could not survive in the Northern Kingdom.

It was not happening. And so the Assyrians said, that's because you have to worship the God of that land. So they sent some priests down and they taught them how to be Jews, but they weren't Jews. So they were partial, kind of like Jews, but they really weren't.

Now, what they did was when the kingdom split, the king was afraid that his people, the only place you could go to worship was in Jerusalem. And the Northern king did not want his people going down South.

So he created some places of worship. One of those was a temple on the Hill of Samaria. Now get this, when the Maccabees are coming back from defeating the Greeks, they said to themselves, hey, if we're gonna fight against pagans, why don't we take out this pagan temple?

And they destroyed the temple in Samaria. Now, the woman at the well asked the question.

Isn't that like a good thing because it's a pagan temple?

I suppose so. But here's the question the woman asked him. She said, our fathers say we should worship on this hill on Samaria, and you Jews say we should worship in Jerusalem. So she's trying to get Jesus involved in a 100 year old dispute.

Oh. Because that dispute, see that happened a hundred years before that, where they destroyed that, they destroyed that temple. And so now she's asking Jesus, where do you fall on this thing about the temple?

Do I have to go to Jerusalem? Or what about our temple? And Jesus said, the day's coming when it's not gonna matter. Because it's about the spirit. You'll have to worship in spirit and in truth. So he says it's the temple, it's not gonna be about the Jerusalem temple.

It's gonna be about you as the temple is what he's really telling her, but you know.

Okay, because, okay, so you're referencing chapter four, verse 12, where she says, are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself as also his sons and his livestock?

Yeah, and right before that, she said, let's see in verse 21, sorry, verse 19. Sir, I see that you're a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, worshiped, that's past tense, on this mountain of Samaria.

Yet you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem. That's the place where she's asking about which temple. She said, he says, believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, because that temple won't be there either in 40 years.

But he said, you Samaritans worship what you do not know. See, because they were taught the Jewish religion, but they don't, not really. You don't, you worship what you don't know. We worship what we do know because salvation is from the Jews.

But an hour is coming and now is here when true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and in truth. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. Yeah, so he's predicting both the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem and the coming of the spirit of Pentecost all at one time.

So in this text, for instance, this is how it plays into to what he says in chapter seven. He's actually letting her know there's something that's about to change. The hour is now here. Something's about to happen.

It's gonna change how you worship.

So how do you think. Maybe, so I think maybe they're alluding so much to the history of, you know, something's changing because like historically, my place of worship is here and yours is there. There's a cultural difference, but he's talking about water and she's like, well, if you know about this water that I don't have to keep going to this.

Well, how did she perceive that? Do you think she made that connection?

I don't think she fully made that distinction unless she understood some Old Testament texts, which I don't think she would have had because they had some of the texts, but they didn't have the prophetic books.

They didn't have the prophetic books. And so therefore it probably, oh, they might've had a couple, they might've had Isaiah. If they had Isaiah, she might've understood it. But for the most part, I think what's happening with her is this, that because of her, let's say occupation, it's possibly hers, that she was there getting water.

It's physical water. Her life was fully bound up in the physical. She had multiple men and even the one she was with now, she wasn't married to. So her life was built on the physical. And Jesus said, if you drink of this physical water, you're still gonna be thirsty.

Nothing changes. You can't fix what's wrong by living in the physical. But I can give you something that could fix the emptiness within you, I think is what he's saying to her. And he doesn't explain it fully, but that's there.

But I will say this, the gospel of John has a lot of water references. Think about this. Let me walk you towards seven because I think seven builds on four. In John chapter one, Jesus gets into the water to be baptized.

There's a repentance there. In John two, he turns the water into wine. In John three, he says to Epidemius, you have to be born of water, that's physical birth and the spirit. Now in chapter four, he takes it a step further and says, I can give you water, which will be like a artesian well within you springing up.

And then in chapter five, he heals a man at the pool of Bethesda. I think it's Bethesda. Yeah, Bethesda, where the man wants to get into the water that's troubled. And he says, do you wanna be healed?

And so he's healed. In chapter six, he walks on water. And then in chapter seven, we come back to water again. And I think chapter seven is kind of the point of all that in some sense.

Like he's been prepping everybody for this moment in seven.

Oh yeah, John's gospel leads right to this point. Are you ready for chapter seven?

Cause it's really exciting. Sure, do you wanna read 37 or do you wanna read more than just 37? Of what, which one? Of John seven? Chapter seven, 37, 39.

Let's see, let me come to that. Pull it up on my digital Bible here. Let's see here. Well, let me prep it first. Okay. The Jews had seven festivals. And they had three of those festivals are, they have to do pilgrimages to Jerusalem.

So two in the spring. How long is that pilgrimage, like how many miles? Well, it depends on where you're from.

Some of them had to come quite a ways because even in the Dyspora, they came. So the three that God told them to go to was, in the spring, there was Passover and then Pentecost. And in the fall was the last of the seven festivals, which is Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles.

Now, here's what's interesting. The Feast of Tabernacles is a real interesting festival because it has kind of multiple layers. On the one hand, you could say, oh, it's about when they went up to the desert, after they left Egypt, because he says about it that they should celebrate, they should make a booth, this thing called a sukkah in the Hebrew.

They make a booth to live in for seven days because he said, I caused them to live in sukkah, in sukkot, which is the plural of sukkah. Now, here's the thing. They didn't live in booths. They lived in tents.

That's a whole different Hebrew word. So did God get it wrong or was he talking about something else?

Now, here's what happens. I don't even understand what a booth would look like. What do you mean they lived in booths?

So they took wood and they made, and they took almost like a see-through cloth, like sheets almost. It's just a temporary, it's a temporary dwelling with three sides. So you had two sides and a back to it.

And it's a little booth that you built. Yeah, and they do that for seven days. So it's a big celebration. And here's what they're celebrating. Yes, they went out into the desert, but again, he said, I caused them to live in sukkot.

They lived in tents, not booths in the wilderness. However, several places in the Bible, in the Old Testament, the cloud that God surrounded them with is called a sukkah. Oh. Yeah, for instance, in chapter four of Isaiah, let me just read something to you from there.

In Isaiah, he's talking about the coming kingdom, Messianic kingdom. And it's very interesting. On that day, the branch of the Lord, et cetera, talking about the Messiah. He says this in verse five, he talks about him coming.

He's coming to do this thing. Then the Lord, that's Yahweh, by the way, then Yahweh will create a cloud of smoke by day and a glowing flame of fire by night. This is in the Messianic kingdom. Over the entire side of Mount Zion, for there will be a canopy over all the glory and there will be a booth for shade from heat by day.

That's a sukkah. So the cloud is given the term sukkah. So the Jewish rabbis, like Rabbi Akiva, who is a first century guy, very famous rabbi, he said that the booth was the cloud. It's about God's presence.

So when the Jews celebrate sukkot, they celebrate God's presence with them. Now, it gets more interesting because in Zechariah 14, he follows what Isaiah said because Isaiah says in the Messianic kingdom, God's gonna come himself and it'll be a sukkah for us.

Now look at Zechariah 14. This is gonna blow your mind. A day of the Lord is coming, he says, talking about the battle, et cetera. Now listen to this. He says, verse five, then Yahweh, my God, will come in all the holy ones, all the saints with him.

Now see, that's reminiscent of the book of Revelation or maybe Thessalonians when he comes and the saints come with him. That's in Zechariah 14. The Lord, my God, will come in all the holy ones with him.

On that day, there will be no light, et cetera. And then it says, on that day, living water will flow out of Jerusalem. Oh.

Interesting. In Zechariah, it's talking about living water.

Yeah, not only that, but get this, the survivors of the nations, even Gentiles, survivors of the nations will go up every year. This is verse 16. They'll go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to celebrate the festival of booths.

In Zechariah, it's talking about the festival of Tabernacles.

Yeah, so both Isaiah 4 and Zechariah 14 says that when God comes on the earth, that his saints come with him, that in the end, everybody's gonna celebrate the festival of booths, Sukkot.

And we know that Jesus came with the saints because of the transfiguration.

Well, here's what's interesting. What did Peter say when he saw those two saints with him on the Mount of Transfiguration? He said, Lord, if you want me to He said, I shouldn't be seeing this. Right, and he said, if you want me to, I'll make booths for Moses and Elijah.

Booths, Sukkot. I always took that as like, what is that?

Like a temple? Like he always said, like, I'll dedicate like a shrine almost to them?

Yeah, no, it's the word booth. It's a booth. He thought it was Sukkot. He thought it was the end. This was the end, and we're gonna celebrate Sukkot. It's tied to Zechariah 14 and Isaiah 4.

Isn't that interesting? So he was like, the thing is happening. It's happening right now.

Yeah, I think he thought this was it. And he wanted to make a booth for each one. Got it, okay. It was interesting, not just one, and not one for everybody. He wanted to make one for Moses and one for Elijah.

That is a fascinating, fascinating connection to me.

That is a fascinating connection, especially, well, do you think then when Jesus is standing at Sukkot, and he has now done all these allusions to water, and just like for reference, how much time is passing, do you think, between like John 1 to John 7?

John has a really interesting time thing going on. But I know this, in John 5, I think it is, there's the festival of, they think it's Purim. John uses all the festivals. He uses different ones. But time with John is really hard to follow.

Most of his book is in the last few days of Jesus' life. I mean, so you've got three years that passes within a few chapters, really. So I don't know the time between it. But here's what's interesting.

The Feast of Tabernacles and the Prophetic Meaning of Living Water

So the Jews thought that Sukkot was a celebration that looked forward to the Messianic kingdom. Now, here's what they did in the celebration. The priest went to the pool of Siloam. That's a spring-fed pool right there outside of Jerusalem.

He took a golden flask every day of Sukkot. He takes a golden flask, fills it with water, gets up on the altar, and he pours that water on the altar. And the people march around the altar one time every day.

On the seventh day, they march around seven times when he does it. Now, just imagine this. Imagine this. Jesus goes the last day. They're celebrating. They're thinking about Zechariah 14. By the way, Psalm 118's a part of this, the Hosanna text.

This is what they sing every day during Sukkot. Hosanna, the coming of the king. They're thinking about the end, about the Messianic kingdom. They're pouring water, and they're thinking about Zechariah 14 because there's gonna be water pouring out of Jerusalem.

See, this is a picture of that. The water's gonna pour out of Jerusalem. And then Jesus says, I think it's probably right after the priest does it, everybody's celebrating, Hosanna, et cetera. And he says, let me have your attention.

And then he says, if you are thirsty, come drink of me and I'll give you water. And he says, and as the scripture says, and there's no scripture that says out of your belly. In the Hebrew, it means your heart, but nowhere does it say out of your heart will pour water.

It says out of Jerusalem. But he says, as the scripture says, out of your belly will flow rivers of water. And they said, is this the Christ? That was their response. They understood Jesus as he's claiming to be Yahweh who's come to bring a kingdom where there's gonna be water flowing.

You're saying that when he did that, which is something that they have done year after year, as first century Jews, since ancient texts of Zechariah, Jesus stands up, he makes his claim of like, actually, it's coming from me.

I am the living water. People were like, oh, okay. Do you think some of them may have perceived of like with confusion at all? Or like, cause that's a pretty bold claim.

Exactly. Let's look at the response. Let's see here. It says, where is it here? Okay. He says, everyone who believes in me, as the scripture says, while streams of living water flow. Oh, my text, my translation here says flow deep within him.

And then John says, here's John's commentary. He said this about the spirit.

By this, he meant the spirit whom those who are related to receive.

Exactly. We'll come back to that in just a second. But here's what the

I love when John does that. He like, John like pans to the camera and he's like, he was talking about the spirit.

Yeah. And when some of the crowd heard these words, verse 40, they said, this really is the prophet. That's the prophet promised by Moses. Others said, this is the Messiah. But some said, surely the Messiah doesn't come from Galilee, et cetera.

And so they, the temple priests went to, they went to arrest him and someone to seize him, but nobody laid hands on him. Then the temple police came to the chief priest who asked him, why haven't you brought him in?

And they said, no one has ever spoke like this. And they said, are you fooled too, et cetera. And so they actually understood that as a messianic terminology when he said it.

That he would have So people understand, you're not going to lightly claim this. And so some of the guards are saying, well, he just claimed something very blasphemous. We should arrest him. And the rest of people are like, I don't know if he's going to claim that he must be the real thing.

Could be, they thought he could be, yeah.

Now, what's interesting to me is John's explanation. When John looks at the camera, as you said, he says, he said this about the spirit and then he gives this commentary, which is very interesting that it's placed here.

He said, those who believed in Jesus were going to receive the spirit for the spirit had not yet been received because Jesus had not yet been glorified. Now What does he mean by that? Well, here's the thing.

If you look at the overarching picture of John's gospel, I think John's gospel has a very important message which most people miss. If you look in chapter one, chapter one kind of has these four points about Jesus.

Jesus is God. And then he says, I think it's a verse four. Then he has the life of God. That's the zoe. Now, by the way, the word zoe, which in the Septuagint was used to describe the life of God, it's used 38 times in the book of John.

He says What is zoe? Zoe, eternal life. Yeah, God's life, a specific kind of life. So Jesus is God. He has the life of God. He came to give us the life of God. That's a little later in the chapter. He's the light that lights every man coming into the world.

And then he's gonna do that through the new covenant, the baptism with the Holy Spirit. John says that in chapter one. He says, the one who sent me to baptize by water said the one you see the spirit landing on like a dove, he will baptize with the Holy Spirit.

Now, that's a relation to Ezekiel 36, the promise of the father, that in the new covenant, God would put his spirit within us. And so that's John's gospel. Now, throughout John's gospel, then Jesus begins to reveal what that means.

John three, you have to be born of the spirit. There's a new birth in chapter four with the woman at the well. He says, I can give you, but he doesn't in that moment because it's not time yet. And so throughout the gospel, Jesus is talking about it through 14 through 17, absolutely fantastic descriptions of the Holy Spirit.

He goes through the whole thing. But John says, at the point in which he said that statement about the water, in fact, all throughout the gospel, the Holy Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus was not yet glorified.

Now, what's interesting is I was reading just yesterday morning, I was reading John Chrysostom from the fourth century, Greek author, most famous preacher in church history. In this text, he thinks that Jesus being glorified is on the cross.

But I would disagree with that if I could disagree with John Chrysostom. And here's why, because in the book of Acts chapter one, Jesus says to the disciples, don't go yet. I want you to go out to all the world, but don't go yet.

Because he said, John baptized you with water, but I'm gonna baptize you with the spirit not many days from now. And that's when they received the ability to be able to do what they need to do. So it really happens

Yes, ma 'am. So when they're talking about, okay, the spirit's coming, but it's not here yet, I'm gonna do it with the spirit, not yet though. Were people like, what is the spirit? Like, what was their understanding of what the spirit was?

Yeah, I don't think so.

Because now they understood that the spirit's always been here, but not given in the sense of Ezekiel 36, not the new covenant. So what we often miss is that the Old Testament promise of the new covenant, that would be something like, I'll say it somewhat quickly and somebody can always look it up if they wanna look it up.

Deuteronomy 30, verse six, Jeremiah 31, 31, Ezekiel 36, those promises are a promise of, in each case, God says, after you come back from exile, I'm gonna do a heart surgery in you. That's the new covenant.

Oh, okay. So they're like, we're gonna be changed, but did they, like, cause we understand the Holy Spirit in a way that is like a messenger for God that kind of flows through us and like within us. But were they like, what is this Holy Spirit?

Like

Well, here's an interesting thing. No, I think they understood it. Let me tell you this, in Malachi chapter four, I'm going all over the place this morning. Yeah. I'm sorry. Malachi four. That's good stuff.

I'm sorry, Malachi three. In Malachi three, Malachi, they've been back now a hundred years plus and there's no new covenant. See, the new covenant was promised after they come back from exile. Still no new covenant.

Malachi says, see, I'm gonna send my messenger. I suppose he means John the Baptist there. And he will clear the way before me. Then the Lord you seek will suddenly come to his temple, the messenger of the covenant you desire.

But that's talking about Jesus, not the Holy Spirit, right? Exactly.

He's bringing the new covenant. See, this is the issue with the book of Hebrews. That's what he says in chapters eight through 13. Jesus came to bring the new covenant. They understood the new covenant to mean that God was gonna change how he's working in us.

Before the Holy... Jesus said, the spirit is with you, but he shall be in you. He says to the disciples in John's gospel. And so they understood that the Holy Spirit was at work in the world, but they were actually looking for the new covenant.

Now notice when John the Baptist says, God told him that Jesus would be the one to baptize with the Holy Spirit. He didn't say, do what with the what? No, he understood that language. It's from Ezekiel 36.

They were praying for that. Okay, okay.

So they were like, this is it, it's happening. That thing that we've been... No, no, I think they understood it. Oh, okay. Okay, so that's why when he stood up, when he's making these references, do you think they were clocking it even though it was over a three-year period perhaps or a one-year period, he's seeing the woman at the well, he's doing the baptisms of the healing, he's standing up and saying the living water flows through me or the water into wine.

Do you think they're like, there's a lot of water of Francis when it's Jesus Christ? I don't know.

Maybe it was just normal to them. Maybe they use that kind of language anyway. I mean, they have that, like I say, they had that bring out kind of ceremony they did during Sukkot. I think it's normal for them to think about the spirit.

Okay, so water is already like inherent within Jewish culture. I think it is. I think that was already a part of their understanding of that kind of thing.

Okay, got it. And do you think this is the turning point that people start seeing Jesus differently?

Some of them definitely did. Some of them were convinced he was the Messiah right there.

Okay, but yeah, I mean, if I saw somebody turn a bunch of water into wine, I'd be pretty convinced there. That'd be pretty startling, yeah. A couple of chapters ago. Yeah, right. Okay, so this is There's a big crowd, that's what I'm saying.

There's a big crowd. There's not just a wedding site crowd, there's a big crowd. Because remember, everybody had to come to this. This Jerusalem was packed full of people for this. They would have all been there in the temple celebrating, watching the priest pour the water, and then Jesus says, boom.

So that's when

That's kind of bold. Like to think about that, we just have like the World Cup games going on where there's tons of people in a stadium and like to think that's where everyone's gathered. And then a guy stands up and he makes that kind of bold proclamation and everyone's like, oh.