“Jesus Gives Living Water to Sinners”
John 4:5-26
2/24/08
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Some of you might still practice the old tradition
of giving up something for Lent. Maybe it’s sweets.
Maybe it’s T.V. Maybe it’s alcohol. But have
you ever considered giving up water? That would be crazy,
wouldn’t it? We need water to survive. If we were to
go a few days without it, we’d die. And yet, we really take
water for granted - as long as it’s around. It’s
cheap; it’s not considered to be as valuable as gold.
It’s plentiful; there’s a lot of it, at least right
now. And it’s easily available; just turn on your
tap. But again, if we didn’t have it we’d die.
If water suddenly became as scarce as gold, think how much it would be
worth then!
But there’s another kind of water that we
need, a water that grants us eternal life, a water that we need to
drink in order to keep us from dying spiritually, and that’s the
water that Jesus gives us. Here, too, this water is plentiful as
well, and it’s also free; the cost for it has been paid by
Jesus. But we take this water even more for granted, often
oblivious to our need for it, drinking from its wells only sparingly,
as if there were some kind of drought going on. We fail to
recognize that our need for this water far outweighs our need for the
water we get from our taps. Though it’s far more valuable
than all the gold and precious stones of this world, we often fail to
treasure it as we ought to. If it were that valuable, that dear,
and that important to us, we’d be drinking of it every moment of
every day. Like this woman at the well, we need to be made
thirsty for the water that Jesus gives, in order that we might drink of
it and have eternal life. And that’s what Jesus is doing
for you and me here today.
First, it’s important to see that this living
water is a gift to us from Jesus. As was just mentioned, this
water is free. It’s free, because Jesus paid for it with
His blood shed at Calvary. This water cost Jesus everything in
order to give it to you; it costs you nothing to receive.
That’s why Jesus says to the woman, “If you knew the gift
of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a
drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you
living water.” Jesus gives living water; He doesn’t
sell it. You can’t give Jesus anything for it. To try
to buy it would be an insult to Him, who’s sacrifice on the cross
was the purchase price for this water.
Second (and related to this attempt to give Jesus
something for His gift), it’s important to see that it’s
more essential to Jesus for Him to give you His gift than it is for you
to give Him your gifts. Jesus began His conversation with this
woman by asking her to give Him a drink. But the narrative
quickly moves away from Jesus’ reception of a drink of water from
this woman to this woman’s reception of the gift of living water
from Jesus. We don’t know if Jesus ever did get His drink
of water. We’re not told. We are told, however, that
He went thirsty on the cross. Jesus allowed Himself to go thirsty
in order that we might not. And so, perhaps John’s failure
to mention whether Jesus got His drink of water here or not was done
for a reason, and that was in order that we might begin to see what it
cost Jesus to give us to drink of His living water.
So, the Word focuses us on the giving of Jesus and
not the giving of the woman. This is a model for worship as a
whole. Worship is not first and foremost about giving our gifts
to God; it’s about Him giving His gifts to us. And so, the
highest form of worship that we can “give” to God is to
simply receive the gifts He gives us. Then, once we have received
those gifts, we may give Him our gifts of thanks, praise, and
obedience. You’ve heard the saying, “It’s more
blessed to give than to receive.” That’s actually a
quote from Jesus in the book of Acts, and there He’s talking
about the blessing of giving to our neighbors in their need.
Better to be on the giving end than the receiving end, when it comes to
our neighbors. But when it comes to God, it’s more blessed
to receive than to give. God is more concerned about giving to us
than receiving from us. Before God, then, it’s better for
us to be on the receiving end than the giving end.
The woman here at the well suddenly finds herself on
the receiving end of the gift of living water. But first she must
realize her need for it; she must be made thirsty, otherwise she
won’t feel she needs to drink. It’s one thing to talk
about living water; it’s another thing to actually drink
it. Jesus is not giving this woman a lecture on living water; He
wants to create a thirst in her for it, so that she might drink
it. It’s easy to create a thirst for regular water.
All you have to do is run around and exercise a lot or just stop
drinking water all together, and you’ll soon become
thirsty. We don’t have to be told that we’re thirsty;
we just are. Creating a thirst for living water is different,
however, because we don’t by nature realize that we need this
water. Here we must be told that we need this water that Jesus
gives, and a thirst for it must be created in us.
This Jesus does with His words of Law. By
convicting this woman of her sin of adultery, Jesus creates a thirst in
her for the living water that He has to give her. He says to her,
“Go, call your husband, and come here.” And the woman
answers Him, “I have no husband.” And Jesus says,
“You’re right in saying, ‘I have no husband’;
for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your
husband. What you have said is true.” Suddenly, the
woman is caught in her sin. This Man knows her intimately.
Her spiritual drought has been revealed. She’s dry and dead
on account of her sin. Physically she’s still alive, but
she’s cut off from God, the source of life. To remain in
such a state will mean eternal death for her rather than eternal life.
Her statement, then, about the proper place to
worship (whether it’s in Samaria or in Jerusalem) is not an
attempt to change the subject. It’s a cry for help.
This woman, caught in her sin as she is, now wants to know where she
can go to get the forgiveness of her sins. She’s
thirsty. Where can she go to receive this water of life?
Jesus is the source. He is the One who gives the gift of living
water. It’s this water that will wipe out the spiritual
drought that’s been brought on by sin. It’s this
water of which whoever drinks will never be thirsty again.
It’s this water that will become in a person a spring of water
welling up to eternal life.
Which brings us to the question, What is this living
water? Jesus doesn’t actually tell us here. He tells
us what it does and that He is its source, but He doesn’t tell us
what it is. Later on, however, in John’s Gospel account
Jesus does tell us what this living water is. In chapter seven
John writes, “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus
stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let Him come to me
and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said,
“Out of His belly will flow rivers of living
water.”’” And then John explains that Jesus
“said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were
to receive...” Here, both Jesus and John make it clear just
what this living water is that gives eternal life, and that’s the
Holy Spirit. The water that Jesus was giving to the woman at the
well in Samaria and the water He is giving to you and to me today here
at the wells of His Word and Sacraments is the living water of the Holy
Spirit.
Why describe the Holy Spirit as living water?
Because He takes from Jesus and pours it into you. He takes
Jesus’ perfect righteousness, His perfect obedience to
God’s Law, and He pours it into you. He takes Jesus’
suffering and death on the cross and pours that into you. He
takes Jesus’ life and pours it into you. And He does this
by way of His Word, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. These
are the channels through which the living water of the Spirit flows
into you, wiping out the drought caused by your sin, giving you new
life in the Spirit, so that you might produce the fruit of faith in God
and love towards one another.
You need this water because like this woman you too
are parched and dry on account of your sins. You are the
adulterer. You are the murderer. You are the gossip.
You are the liar. You need living water, and the only One who can
give you that water is Jesus. He not only tells you this, but He
shows it to you on His cross, where He suffered and died for your
sins. There, living water flowed from His belly, as His side was
pierced with a spear. In this way Jesus showed that by way of His
death He is the source of the living water that He gives you. It
comes from Him crucified for your sins and is delivered to you by the
Spirit through the waters of your Baptism, through the Word, through
the proclamation of the forgiveness of your sins, and through the
eating and drinking of Christ’s body and blood at His
Table. It’s this living water that brings you back from the
dead and gives you eternal life.
And according to Jesus, to have eternal life is to
know the Father and the Son whom He has sent. So, when Jesus says
here that the true worshippers of God are those who worship Him in
spirit and truth, we now know what this means: Those who worship
God in spirit and truth are those who drink of the living water of the
Spirit and come to the Father through Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and
the Life. The true worshipers of God are those who have been made
alive by the Spirit and believe the truth of God’s Word, the
truth about Jesus Christ crucified for our salvation. Those who
worship God in spirit and truth are those in whom the living water of
the Spirit has had its way and in whom it now wells up to eternal
life. They know the Father and the Son.
And here we are today worshipping in spirit and
truth, as the Holy Spirit is pouring into us the living water that
comes from Jesus, giving us eternal life. We can see now how
precious and what a treasure this living water is. It’s
much more valuable than any earthly metals or jewels. Not only
that, but we see how our Lord has abundantly provided us with this
water through His Word and Sacraments and what it cost Him to provide
it for us. We need this water to survive. We need this
water to continue to enliven the spiritual deserts of our lives.
So, let us not give this water up for Lent or for anything else, but
let us continually ask Him who is the source of this living water to
give us to drink of this gift that He has purchased for us with His
blood, in order that we might never be thirsty again. Amen.