John 4:10-14 "Living Water"

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?  Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,  but those who drink 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 Middle Eastern climate can be harsh and dry.  Water is necessary for life everywhere in the world, but in regions where water is not readily available, it becomes a commodity.  A well is a valuable resource.  Evidently, this little town's claim to fame was the well, centuries old, that was dug by Jacob, grandson of Abraham.  The well was deep.  The water was good.  It sustained life.

In this conversation with an outcast Samaritan woman, when Jesus referred to Himself as the source of living water, His language was not incidental.  He was intentionally wanting her (and us) to understand something basic.

First, Jesus is saying something about His identity.  And then, He is commenting on a spiritual principle related to His identity.  To grasp the importance of what Jesus is saying, it might be helpful to remember what God had told the Israelites  through the prophet Jeremiah:  "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water." (Jeremiah 2:13)

When Jesus refers to Himself as the source of living water, He is making the same claim that God had previously made -Jesus was identifying Himself as God.  And by doing this, He is also alluding to the rest of that prophecy from Jeremiah.  He is claiming that no other well, no other cistern, no other source of water can give life in the way that He can give it -and that seeking life elsewhere is sin.

We all have a spiritual thirst.  It's how God created us.  Some people try to quench the thirst with other (manmade) religions.  Some people try to quench the thirst with science and logic and man's best thinking.  Others try to quench it with family, or careers or money or fame or power.  None of those things truly quench the spiritual thirst because our spiritual thirst was uniquely designed by God to be quenched only by the Living Water we find in Him.  Every attempt to quench our spiritual thirst outside of Jesus Christ is like digging cisterns that can't hold water.  

Unfortunately, although the broken spiritual cisterns we create can't hold water, and therefore cannot sustain spiritual peace or joy -they can't really support life -they can, it seems, sometimes slake our thirst just enough to keep us returning to the broken cisterns. This, clearly, is not God's plan for us.

In Isaiah 55:1-3, God invites us (seriously -an invitation by God Himself) to let go of all those things that take the edge off of our spiritual hunger and thirst but that do not actually satisfy.  Instead, we are invited to find sustenance and life in Him:

 “Come, all you who are thirsty,
    come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
    and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
    and you will delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me;
    listen, that you may live."