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"Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again. But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. But the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." (John 4:13-14)
Our subject is The Power of Life that Christ Gives — and that Christ alone can give.
This is the event we read of, when the Lord Jesus Christ was bound to travel through Samaria. He took the old Roman road and came to a city of Samaria called Sychar. There was a well, a very famous well, now some 4,000 years old, dug by Jacob. Jacob's well — the books used to say it was 75 feet deep, but it was cleared out in the 1970s and found to be just above 100 feet. No great well by today's standards, but quite deep for those days when everything was dug by hand.
At this historic place, Christ rested on the wall of the well. The disciples went into Sychar, half a mile away, to buy food. The Samaritan woman approached, and Christ addressed her and asked for water.
Christ had mentioned living water to her. He wished to illustrate spiritual life, and he illustrated it with this term — living water. There was the water in the well, or there was living water, spiritual life.
She was completely ignorant of this. She could not make out what he was referring to. "Where are you going to get this living water?" she asked. She had never thought of such a thing. She was a religious woman, following the cult of Samaria, but living water did not suggest anything to her mind.
It may be that there are any number of friends here tonight in exactly that position. If we speak about spiritual life, you may be a postgraduate, a PhD, a brilliant person — but it could be you know nothing at all about spiritual life. You know nothing about:
It was meaningless for her, and that is why this is going to be so vital and so important.
"Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again." I like this old-fashioned, archaic word whosoever of the King James Version. It means the same as the modern truncated whoever, but somehow it communicates better — perhaps because it is unusual, or simply longer.
Whosoever — everybody. It is a universal term. Without exception, every possible kind of person: rich, poor, brilliant, slow-minded, ambitious, not at all ambitious, of whatever nation or people. It is all-embracing.
You need the fundamental things of life — water, food, companionship, warmth. You cannot have them once for all; you need them every day. It doesn't matter if you are the fittest person in the world or the sickest — your needs are the same.
This applies not only to material water, but to everything material. "Oh, I should be happy if I had money," some people think. No, you won't be. You will need more, and more, and more. Money won't satisfy. You'll be jealous for something else. Whatever it is you think satisfies you, it will not.
Sometimes young people go through a phase where they think they could be fully satisfied by music — playing it nonstop, 24 hours a day if they could. And they get hooked, just as you can get hooked on liquor. They become bad-tempered and out of sorts, and it is not enough.
Whosoever drinketh of this material water will always be wanting something. There will always be a void within. He will never be satisfied.
Actually, young people are more sensitive to this than older people. Many, if not most, pass through a phase during their teenage years or early twenties when they are very dissatisfied with life and with themselves. For some it is short, for others quite long — for some very deep and profound.
I have been pastoring for many years, and I have heard many people say that before they were converted to Christ, they got into a phase so bad they were very near to taking their lives. That young person isn't so foolish — they have seen the emptiness and vanity of material life, and its dissatisfaction.
Then we come into our late twenties and thirties, and we find some optimism. We become grimly determined not to believe in God, insisting this is a marvellous life and everything is at our feet, and we go through the rest of our lives with this fiction. But deep down, the void is still there. When we were younger and less clever, we saw it more clearly for a time.
We are told this country has between six and seven thousand suicides a year, and the vast majority are young people between 20 and 24, three times more males than females. In the celebrity world, the record is among South Korean K-pop stars — but it affects everyone. I once read a long list of philosophers who took their own lives, going right back to the Greek period and still happening today.
It doesn't matter if you were as beautiful as Cleopatra, or as successful as Mark Antony. Whosoever depends on material supplies will thirst again, and again, and again. You will never fill the void within. You depend on this world — fame, fortune, substance, acquisitions, experiences, thrills, fashions — and you will need it in constant renewed supply to the end of life's journey. And then you will face death, going into eternity without any relationship with God: unforgiven, unchanged, no friend in heaven, no communion with him.
But now these great words: "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him" — spiritual life portrayed as living water.
Consider these words, that I shall give him. On the one hand there is the water in the well, which has to be hauled up, taken in a bucket, and drunk from a cup. But the water that Christ shall give does not come from outside you in this world — it is infused directly into you, into your central being, by Christ.
You don't drink it. You don't eat it. "I shall give you." These words are so full of meaning. It comes to our inner core, to our soul — life in the soul, directly imparted by Christ, and by him alone.
In this world of multi-faith, people react at once. "By Christ alone? Are you saying there is only one religion?" Yes — only Christ can give you life in the soul.
What other religion in the world has a Saviour? There are thousands of religions in the world, but really there are only two. There is religion with a Saviour, and religion without a Saviour — without a personal Saviour who is God, who has come to redeem us and has made it possible for us to be forgiven by suffering and dying himself on a cross.
Christ the Saviour came into the world and allowed himself to be arrested. He was God, and he was man also. Only God can save, and yet he had to be like us — a human being — to suffer as we deserve to suffer for our sin.
God is holy, surely you know this, dear friends. God cannot give hospitality to sin. He is indignant against sin. His holiness is totally against sin and defilement; it must be destroyed by punishment. That is the very character of God. If he were not holy, he wouldn't be God.
In order to forgive men and women, sin had to be dealt with. God came himself in the person of Christ, and suffered and died. God the Father laid upon him the guilt of everyone in the history of the world who would be forgiven — and punished him instead of them.
A punishment which should last forever was compressed into the space of six hours on Calvary's cross — a punishment for millions and millions of people who would be forgiven and saved, all added together beyond our comprehension.
There is only one religion with a Saviour who came and atoned, suffered and died, and offered up his own perfect righteousness on behalf of all who would be forgiven and saved. That is the religion of the Bible, the religion of Christ. All others are presumably invented by human beings and have no Saviour, no Redeemer.
"Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him." It must be given. It cannot be earned. Spiritual life cannot be deserved or earned by us, for we are under condemnation. We are sinners.
Before I was converted — and this is true of everyone who is converted to Christ — I never worshipped. I had no worship for God. I never served him, never obeyed him, but disobeyed him. I never studied him, wasn't interested in him, never listened to his word, didn't care. No love, no affection, no obedience, no service — nothing.
Is that you, friends? How can you possibly earn the forgiveness or the favour of God? We are condemned. He must give it freely. He must pardon us freely. We call upon him:
"Lord, forgive me. Lord, take me. Lord, change me. Come to me. Help me."
And he must do it freely. Salvation must be a gift.
"Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst." This is an astonishing illustration. Imagine a drink of water that you drank once and never had to drink again for the rest of your life. Once it is in you, it will do its work. The body will not get rid of it — impossible.
That is how spiritual life works. Christ gives it to us, puts it right inside us, and once we have got it, we never lose it. What is it, this spiritual life? Let me tell you what it does:
A cup of water never did anything like this. It affected me physically and kept me alive, but it did not change my character, bring me into touch with God, or give me spiritual life that lasts forever. The physical water had to be renewed countless times through the day, every day of my life. But this I drank once. I said:
"Lord, change my life. Come to me. Pardon and forgive me. Carry out this saving work in me."
And life came into my soul. I have loved him ever since. Yes, I have slipped and fallen, but he has restored me and helped me in his great patience and love, and he will never let me go — not to the end of life's journey. As Christ says a little later in John's Gospel, "None shall pluck them out of my hand."
You take the water he gives once, and it is life forever — now and eternally. You will never be let down by the Lord. You will never be forsaken, never abandoned. You are his, and he looks after his sheep, his possessions. He loves you with an everlasting love. He died to atone for your sin, he has embraced you, and he has called you to himself.
"The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." As Charles Wesley put it:
"Thou of life the fountain art; Freely let me take of thee; Spring thou up within my heart, Rise to all eternity."
Isn't that perfect? A versification of the words of the Lord.
Dear friends, this is the call of Christ. Just as he called to the woman, her first reply, though she did not yet fully understand, was a good one:
"Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw."
She wasn't there yet, but she soon was. That must be our response: Lord, give me this water.
Everybody knows how to drink material water. But how do you drink spiritual life? Let me tell you as we close — here is how you respond to Christ, and you must respond. If you do not respond, you will come to the day of judgement unforgiven, a lost soul, doomed for all eternity.
Receive him — which is the Bible way of saying, believe in him. Believe that he is God and Saviour, who became incarnate, who came into the world to make an atonement for lost souls. Believe in what he did — that he died on Calvary and took the punishment of sin for all who come to him. Believe with all your heart, and say, like the woman, "Sir, give me this water, this life, that I thirst not."
Repent of your sin. Give your life to him and say:
"Lord, forgive me. I never worshipped, never served, never obeyed, but deliberately disobeyed. I broke all the commandments, spent my life on myself, did what I wanted, thought only of myself. Forgive me all my sins — that mountain of lies, that mountain of pride, that mountain of selfishness that has been my past life, that mountain of hostility to others. Lord, forgive me."
Oh, listen tonight, dear friends. This is the call of Christ. It comes only from an ageing man, but I am reading it from his word — it is his call to you. It may be that your judgement for all eternity depends on what you do with this call, even tonight.
Let us pray together.
O God, our gracious Heavenly Father, hear us, we pray. Move in every heart. Cause us to bend the knee and to yield, O Lord, to Christ, and to trust only in him, so that we never thirst again. O Lord, meet with us, and hear us, and hear our cry, and come and deal with us. We ask these things in our dear Saviour's name, for his sake. Amen.
