You’ll turn within your Bibles please to Ezekiel chapter 47, beginning at the first verse.
Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the East; the temple faced East. The water was flowing down from below the South end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar.
Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east, and behold, the water was trickling out on the South side, going on Eastward. With a measuring line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits and then led me through the water, and it was ankle deep. Again he measured a thousand and led me through the water, and it was knee deep. Again he measured a thousand and led me through the water, and it was waist deep.
Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen; it was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through. And he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen this?” Then he led me back to the bank of the river. As I went back, I saw on the bank of the river many trees on one side and on the other.
And he said to me, “This water flows toward the Eastern region and goes down into the araba and enters the sea. When the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh. And wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish, for this water goes there that the waters of the sea may become fresh. So everything will live where the river goes.
Fishermen will stand beside the sea from En-gedi to En-eglaim. It will be a place for the spreading of nets; its fish will be of very many kinds, like the fish at the great sea, but its swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they are to be left for salt. On the banks on both sides of the river there will grow all kinds of trees for food; their leaves will not wither, their fruit fair. They will bear fresh fruit every month because the water for them flows from the sanctuary; their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.
And from there we turn to the Gospel of John, chapter 4, beginning at the first verse. When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus himself did not baptize but only his disciples, he left Judea and departed again for Galilee.
He had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s Well was there, so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink,” for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, “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.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, you’ve given us your word for instruction and for encouragement. Help us to see and recognize all that you describe. Build us up in hope and strengthen us in faith through your word. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
So while traveling from the area surrounding Jerusalem to go to Galilee, Jesus went through Samaria and stopped to rest in the town of Sychar, the modern-day city of Nablus and the Old Testament city of Shechem.
Father, following the chronology of John’s gospel, this was probably during the summer. Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. He stopped to rest because he was tired. He was on a route between Jerusalem and Galilee that should take around three days to traverse, likely hurrying along for his disciples’ sake of conscience because they were traveling through a territory very unfriendly towards Jews.
So Jesus took a seat and sent his disciples on into the city to buy supplies. It was about the sixth hour; it was 12:00, high noon—the hottest part of the day in summertime in the Middle East. Jesus was hot, tired, and surely thirsty, sitting there beside a well alone and without any means of drawing up the water.
Then, along came a woman from Samaria to draw water. Jesus’s presence there in that place and during that time, as a traveler sitting beside a well, though uncommon, was not unusual or unheard of. At least he was outside of Samaria because, you know, he was a Jew and not where he was supposed to be. Cities in Israel typically had two principal water supplies: a large system or stone reservoir kept within a walled city while a deep well was usually located outside of the city gates for easy use by travelers and merchants caring for their animals and for the local residents.
You’ll find an example of this in your bulletin where there are some pictures I took of the well outside the city gates of Jerusalem. So really, this was a practical thing because nobody wanted an influx of animals like camels, horses, sheep, and goats to be brought inside the city walls, navigating narrow streets trying to reach a water source.
Nor was it reasonable to expect a person to go in and bring out enough water for them because animals tend to drink a lot. In a dry climate, animals tend to drink far more water than animals in cooler and wetter regions. Thus, with her appearance, Jesus’s problem was solved.
So Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” Now, I’m confident that in his conversation with her, Jesus used all of the appropriate niceties and politeness that we would expect but which were not recorded for us here. I am sure that Jesus was raised to use the first-century Jewish equivalent of “please” and “thank you,” especially with women and strangers.
So although the Greek verb used here is written as an imperative, I would tend to agree more with the dynamic sense of the NIV’s softer rendition as “Will you give me a drink?” than with this being some kind of imperious command.
Plus, even though a woman might have been ordinarily expected to serve a man based on the cultural, social, and political context, I cannot expect that a Jewish man trying to command a Samaritan woman in Samaritan territory would be very well received, much less obeyed. Jesus’s request was certainly a shock to her, as the Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?”
This just was not done! A first-century Jew would not ask a Samaritan for a cup of water, probably not even if he were dying of thirst! That was the shocking premise of the Good Samaritan parable. The Jew would be spiteful and prideful, considering themselves superior, better, more righteous, and chosen by the Lord. Yet Jesus is Jesus, and He is not like other Jews.
Jesus answered her, “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.”
A strange response, so strange that alone it would seem to be nonsense. How could she have understood what he meant? His reply raises three questions that we are fortunate and better able to understand because we have all the rest of scripture and we have everything written prior in John’s gospel.
What is the gift of God? Who is Jesus? And what is living water? Coming from a Jew, even from Jesus to a Samaritan, this gift of God could only really be understood to mean one thing: God’s grace. This gift is the love and favor of God Almighty, Yahweh. The gift was his divine election, meaning God’s choice, his selection of the chosen people, Israel.
But any other Jew saying something like this to her would sound pretentious and condescending; it would come across more as, “Oh, if you only understood the gift of God, you poor unfortunate Samaritan!” Yet from Jesus, the sense is more invitational: “If you knew the gift of God,” sounding more like, “Let me share the gift of God with you.”
Now, since we’ve read the first two chapters of John, hearing this in that literary context, we know and understand what this gift really meant from Jesus—the light of light and the right to become the children of God, and knowledge of relational knowledge of the Father. Namely, this gift of God is his electing grace, our covenantal adoption by the Lord. All of these things come to us through and in the person of Jesus, by God’s grace alone.
Please also notice that Jesus says, “If you knew,” which really means “if you recognized and understood.” He is not saying that she does not have it but is more saying that she does not know whether she has it or not.
Finally, answering the question, who is Jesus, should be easy for us by this point in John’s gospel. He is the Logos who is Theos and Anthropos. Jesus is God. God; Jesus is God the Son, the Messiah.
With the third question of what is living water, that is tough because living water is not something that has been mentioned in this gospel yet. We should, however, immediately recognize that Jesus is crafting a metaphor; that Jesus is speaking about something spiritual which he thinks ought to have already been understood, as he did when talking with Nicodemus.
But I expect, and hope, that we as 21st-century Christians already understand something of what Jesus spiritually means by living water. So what is living water? Technically, it is a term used to describe naturally running or flowing water like rivers and lakes and streams, springs and oceans. It is not used to describe things like ponds or puddles or cisterns. It is water that is not stagnant or still.
Living water, dead is not spiritual for first-century Jews. Living water was necessary for their purification rites; living water filled their mikvah, and as they drained, their impurities and uncleanness were also carried away. But that was not a Samaritan emphasis.
So really, what was the Samaritan woman probably thinking at first when Jesus seemed to offer her living water? Probably that Jesus knew about a hidden spring nearby that she was unaware of and that he was offering to show her where she could get water without needing to go through all the work and effort and struggle that drawing it up from the public well required.
But listen to her closely. The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?” Do you hear desperation in her voice? Can you hear her need? Might you be hearing a desire that she never even knew she had before?
On the one hand, you may read sarcasm into her voice, imagining her laughing at Jesus: “But you have nothing! You have nothing to draw water with, and that’s a deep well! Where do you think you are going to get this water?” If that were her true attitude, would she have continued this conversation? Would you expect her to actually stick around and listen to Jesus? No, of course not, which is part of why we know that she was interested in Jesus and what he had to say. She was thirsty for more and becoming more curious about this weird Jew.
So if there was an element of sarcasm, then it was certainly mixed with curiosity and hope that she could not explain. But what was she really thirsty for? The few details that John provides, about which we’ll focus more upon later, strongly imply that this woman was most concerned about the necessities of life, about her own survival.
So in the heat of that particular moment with Jesus, she heard what her physical body wanted and needed most—fresh and clear water, some easy access water. But apart from her mind, her heart also heard Jesus speaking to its greatest need. See, Samaritans weren’t concerned with ritual purity in the same way that the Jews were, so she would not instinctively think about this spiritually.
She did not have or know the prophets because the Samaritans only had their version of the Torah as scripture, similar to the Sadducees. Therefore, she had no way to recognize the deeper spiritual meaning that Jesus was implying.
However, it certainly seems as the Holy Spirit was beginning to speak to her heart, opening it to consider Jesus’s offer. Now, the rest of her response also seems to carry both aspects of incredulity and hope: “Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons in his livestock.”
She was asking him, “Who are you? Who do you think you are? You’re just a man, just a Jew. Do you really think that you are better than our ancestors? That you are greater than the holy patriarchs?” But it feels as if there are still some questions that she leaves unspoken: “What have you done for us? You, as in you people, as in you Jews. What have you or will you do for me?”
Those were kept unspoken because her flesh was instinctively answering, “Nothing.” So standing there beside the well, this woman possessed no positive expectations about Jesus, which is not unreasonable in light of how her people had been treated in the recent past by the Jewish authorities.
She had a reasonable right to even speak accusingly towards Jesus as a Samaritan to a Jew in a Samaritan town, even as a woman, although it would have been socially improper and scandalous for her to speak to a man this way, especially in public.
We will soon see why she probably had little reason to care about what people thought about her, as her public reputation was likely in the negative already. But still, even in some justifiable righteous anger at all that she imagined Jesus represented, standing there before her, her heart was still opening itself up to the hope of something more, something greater than water—perhaps a hope for acceptance, for quality, a hope for something, a hope that something good could come to her.
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” She wanted it; she wanted what Jesus had to offer her, but she didn’t know what she was asking for.
She did not understand what Jesus was really offering her, but she was still thinking that Jesus was talking about water, thinking that he really was offering her some high-quality H2O. But if Jesus was not offering water, then what was he talking about? We should wonder: Was this a new teaching from Jesus? New as in innovative or different from the Old Testament?
Jesus told her, “The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Speaking spiritually and using metaphors, Jesus’s words should prompt three questions for those who hear: What is water? What is this spring of water? And what does he mean by eternal life?
Following Jesus’s line of argument with Nicodemus, the water he was offering to give her is the gift of God, the Holy Spirit, with the becoming as regeneration—being born again, born from above, or anóthen. Ezekiel, looking back to the prophet, saw the same eschatological vision that the evangelist would see exiled on Patmos, and I do not think that was a coincidence.
To Ezekiel, then, these angels showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.
The spring to well up inside her is the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence within the regenerate elect. He bubbles up inside of us, filling us and spilling out of us, just as a spring of water will well above the ground and overflow the banks of a pool to pour out in every direction.
This spring of the Spirit regenerates and sanctifies us, cleanses us and purifies us, filling us with life, and restoring our souls, softening our stone hearts and transforming them into living hearts of flesh.
Previously, John explained in Jesus’ teaching that eternal life is the consequence or result of our loving obedience to God our Father in heaven—living for God’s glory, worshiping and enjoying him forever. Now, Jesus expands his teaching about that life, drawing from Ezekiel.
Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple towards the east; the temple faced east. The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar.
Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around to the outside to the outer gate that faces east, and behold, the water was trickling out the south side.
Ezekiel saw a vision of the Lord’s temple, and in that vision, he saw water flowing out from under the temple doors, filling the temple courts. Then he was taken outside the temple and shown the water flowing even further out, flowing out of the courtyard to fill and cover the city and the lands beyond until it reached the sea.
He was told that when the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh. Or as the King James more literally translates, “The waters shall be healed.”
Call that the Apostle Paul; he described our bodies as being a temple of the Holy Spirit inside you. And remember that Ezekiel was not seeing a vision of a rebuilt or physically restored temple in Jerusalem but the image and picture of the church, elect Israel.
So this may start to help us begin understanding Jesus’s spring of living water. The flowing waters in Ezekiel’s vision were purifying the temple of the wicked foulness and spiritual pollution that God’s people had done there.
Then once the temple was clean and purified, the waters flowed outward as a cleansing flood, washing away sin to become a flood of restoration and holiness instead of destruction.
He describes salt water fresh, becoming healed, transforming water that was once deadly to drink into something sweet and clean that gives life to everyone who drinks, leaving no room for doubt as to the water’s effectiveness.
He sees on the banks of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food; their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail; they will bear fresh fruit every month because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.
That’s what John sees as he sees the water, the river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city.
On either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit yielding fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. You see, they both saw a river of life springing up beneath the Lord’s throne, flowing out to cleanse and heal the world, providing for all of God’s good creation.
Together, they both describe a vision of the restored world of Christ’s eternal kingdom—the world and kingdom to which every believer, all the elect in history, belong to as loyal citizens.
A world cleansed of sin and wickedness or evil—a world filled with people whose sin has been washed away; a people living and loving one another while worshiping and glorifying and enjoying the Lord forever.
That is the spring of living water which Jesus offered the Samaritan and which he offers to each of us. It is water that we may have free of charge; all it requires is our asking. Yet although he will give it to us freely, it costs everything.
It costs us all of our sin and sinfulness. Receiving this water, we must surrender and give up our sinful desires, thoughts, words, and deeds. It costs us our freedom to desire to sin.
Receiving this water, we must strive to become obedient to Christ in his commands for our love of God, even knowing that we will never obey perfectly in this life on this side of glory.
But now obedience becomes our earnest desire. It costs us our sovereignty of self. Receiving this water, we must be transformed into conformity with the perfect image of God, Jesus Christ. His will must become our command; his love must become our love, as his faithfulness is made into our faithfulness.
So receiving this water, what do we gain? We will be washed and made clean, pure and holy. Our pain will be soothed, and all our sorrows comforted as our tears are wiped away. We will be loved by God, and we shall love him in return as his chosen children of adoption.
So hearing these words from Jesus yet without understanding, the woman begged him, “Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
And her response reminds me of Peter during the Last Supper, where Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, “Where I’m going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.” Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.”
See, both persons ask Jesus for something without understanding or knowing what it was they were asking. But I believe that both asked because the Spirit was working within their hearts in that moment.
Peter thought he could go with Jesus on the trip, and this woman thought Jesus was going to lead her to some secret source of water. But really, both were asking Jesus for what their Spirit-awakening hearts most desired: life—eternal life, to live forever in the presence of God.
I hope and pray that each of us are thirsty for what Jesus offers and that our thirst is never quenched; that we never stop wanting to drink deeply in the Holy Spirit’s spring and experience his cool, clean, and fresh living water.
I hope and pray that we are each and all being washed out, cleansed from the inside out by the Spirit’s sanctifying work in our hearts and lives. So let his water of life bubble up inside you; let it fill you and overflow out of your heart into the world around you.
Let his water pour out of you and mingle with the water pouring out of your fellow believers, healing and cleansing us all. Let our spirit-filled waters mingle, unite, indivisible, and indistinguishable as the one body of Christ, his own holy church. Amen.
Please stand, and let us say what we believe, using the words of the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was conceived…