Sermon: Living Water
May 19th, 2019 Rev. Betsy Perkins
First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Scripture passage: John 4:1-26, John 7:38
Thirst!
The human body is more than half water. A baby’s body is more like three-quarters water. This means that for an adult who weighs around 170 pounds, 100 pounds is just water weight, 70 pounds is everything else – bones, brains, tissue. So the most essential part of our daily diet is water!
Water is necessary for the transport system in our bodies, first in digestion and then to carry the nutrients as well as the oxygen to every cell. Water is necessary to wash out the waste, to keep our bodies clean inside and outside. Water lubricates our bodies, keeps joints slick and skin supple. It helps keep our temperature even, especially in the summer when our cooling system of sweat is activated.
Without water our bodies can quickly dehydrate. Here’s an interesting fact: just a 2% decrease of water in your body (in that 170 pound person, it’s just 2 pounds less water, less than a quart) causes a 20% decrease in mental and physical performance. Luckily, your body gives you warning signs when you need water. Thirst is one of them, though by the time we recognize our thirst we are often well on our way to being dehydrated. Signs of needing water include a dry mouth, dry skin, a headache, getting dizzy, confused, even fainting.
Our hearts and our souls can get dehydrated too. Our Creator wired us not just with signs that signal physical dehydration, but also with signs that signal emotional, spiritual dehydration. Dehydrated souls exhibit irritability, worry, anxiety, sleeplessness, or loneliness. Spiritual dehydration causes hopelessness, guilt, fear, dissatisfaction, a sense of longing for something more – symptoms of a dryness deep within. Just as we often confuse physical thirst with hunger or other problems, so too we often confuse the signs of spiritual thirst as caused by a particular difficulty we are facing, or a particular season of life. Often we call it ‘stress’. In his book Come Thirsty, Max Lucado writes, “Stress signals a deeper need, a longing.” A thirst. Are there any signs of thirst in your life?
We can see evidence of spiritual thirst all around us. We see it in the increasing isolation and loneliness of people today – it’s even being called an epidemic. We can even see it in the tragedy in Darien this week, there was a thirst for relationship, for love, for control and power, that could not be satisfied. The longing to find relief from pain, emotional or physical, can become a desperate thirst that leads people to drugs, to violence, to all sorts of things that harm themselves and harm others.
Thirst is your body’s way to draw you to water, to invite you to drink. In Jesus, God experienced thirst. Jesus felt thirsty and asked a woman for water. Jesus looked at her and could see a thirsty soul, see a thirst that came from brokenness in her personal relationships, from fears that brought her to the well at noon rather than face others in her community who would have gathered first thing in the morning. Perhaps also a thirst that came from questions about worship and about God.
I believe it was poet Henry David Thoreau who wrote that most people “lead lives of quiet desperation.” Jesus sees that thirst within us; he sees the thirst within you! Jesus knows your deepest longings, knows your heart, and invites you, as he did that woman, saying, “If you knew the gift of God, you would ask him, and he would give you living water.” We need to treat our souls as we treat our thirst. Take a gulp; flood your heart with a good swallow of satisfying water…. Where do you find water for your soul?
Jesus is the Source of Living Water
The bible contains several invitations to those who are thirsty. 700 years before Jesus sat next to a well and asked for a drink because he was thirsty, the prophet Isaiah shared a message from God. God spoke an invitation, “Is anyone thirsty? Come to the waters and drink – even if you have no money. Come, it’s all free. Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength? Why pay for food that does you no good? Listen to me, and eat what is good. Come to me, and listen, and you will find life. I will make an everlasting agreement with you: I will give you the same unfailing love I promised to King David.” (Is.55:1-3, NLT)
Jesus issued this same invitation, not just to the woman at the well, but a few chapters later in John’s gospel. This time, rather than being in the territory of the Samaritan outsiders, Jesus is right in the heart of the city of Jerusalem in the courtyard of the Temple, the center of Jewish worship of the Lord God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. Jesus is there to be a part of the annual Jewish celebration called the Festival of Tabernacles. This is the remembrance of God’s goodness to the people during their years of wandering in the desert, living in tabernacles (tents) after being freed from slavery in Egypt, before they enter the Promised Land. One particular event they commemorate during the festival is how God provided water for the people in the dry, barren desert when they became very thirsty. Once, when all their water was gone and they were so thirsty they thought they would all die, the people begged Moses for water. So Moses cries out to God in prayer. God directed Moses to gather the people at a big rock face, then to whack the rock with his staff. Out of the rock flowed clean, refreshing water that revived them all (Exodus 17).
At the annual Festival of Tabernacle, they celebrated God’s provision of life-giving water by having the priest go to a special spring to fill a large pitcher with water, then bring it into the Temple and pour it out over the altar. The priest did this each day for the seven days of the festival. Then on the final, seventh day, the priests would fill many, many pitchers of water and pour them out again and again so that water would be flowing down, running across the floor.
Listen as I read John 7:37-39: On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood [in the temple court] and shouted out, “Is anyone thirsty? Let them come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” John then adds an explanation, saying: By this Jesus meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
The Holy Spirit was the gift of God that Jesus poured out on his disciples, the gift that would quench our thirst, the deep thirst in our souls. Being a believer doesn’t mean we won’t ever get thirsty again. At the Temple during the Festival, Jesus is talking to the religious folks, to people who are there to worship God. So having religion and believing in God is not a once-and-for-all cure for thirstiness, just as standing in the middle of a lake doesn’t substitute for drinking water. Our bodies will continue to experience physical thirst if we don’t drink; our souls will continue to experience thirst, too, if we don’t drink in God’s presence and love each day. Instead, thirst invites, it draws us into the ever flowing, running water of God’s love and care, providing for our souls the kind of nourishment that truly satisfies and truly addresses our deepest thirst.
When I get up in the morning, there are days when the first thing I reach for is my phone and I can get pulled for 30 minutes reading my news feed about all the events going on in the world, the things that happened the day before and while I slept and the things that may happen in the day to come. On those days I often end up feeling pretty parched, feeling sad and discouraged and stressed. But on other days, I resist the pull of the news feed and spend 30 minutes listening to God’s voice first as I read the Bible and silently drinking in God’s love and presence. Then, I feel ready to face the day! The nutrients of God’s love have been carried to my heart to give it strength. My attitude has been softened and made supple. My emotional temperature is better regulated throughout the rest of the day.
Believers Become Sources of Living Water
But this isn’t all that happens when we take time to drink from the living water of Christ’s presence and invite the Spirit to fill us up. It’s not just about how I myself benefit. I’ll never forget how Rick Warren begins his book, The Purpose Driven Life. He starts with the words, “It’s not about you.”
It’s not about you! In that invitation in Isaiah 55 to all who are thirsty to come and drink, the Lord explains, “See how I use [you] to display my power among the peoples… Nations you do not know, and peoples unknown to you will come running to obey, because I, the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, have made you glorious.” Our well-watered lives are to draw other thirsty people to God, to invite them to find water that truly gives life.
What amazes me about what Jesus is saying about this gift of life-giving water isn’t that I should go to Him to find it – I believe and know that to be true. What really stuns me is that he goes on to add that when I do, my life will become a spring, a river, through which the life-giving water will flow to others, will flow out to water the world around me!
In Isaiah 58, God continues to speak to His people, saying, “If you get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, stop pointing the finger and spreading malicious talk, and if you share your food with the hungry, if you satisfy the needs of the down-and-out, then … you will become like a well-watered garden, like a gurgling spring that never runs dry.” (Is.58:9-11, NTL/Msg)
The Samaritan woman’s response to Jesus’ life-giving presence is a picture of what Jesus says satisfies His hunger, quenches His thirst. She generously leaves her water jug behind for a weary group of Jewish men, and as the living water bubbles up into her life, she rushes back to her village and begins to share her discovery of God’s Messiah, of the Savior of the world, and invites her whole community to come and meet him.
On the final page of the Bible, in the final verses of the book of Revelation, the invitation is heard again. Revelation 22:17 says, “The Spirit and the bride (that is the church, that is us!) say, ‘Come! Everyone should echo, Come! Are you thirsty? Come! Come and drink, anyone who wants may drink from the free gift of the waters of life.’”
Will you allow the gift of living water slake your thirst today? How will it then flow out to water those around you, people unknown to you, people who are parched with longing for a life that truly satisfies? Who will you invite to come and drink from the free gift of the waters of life?
The next 4 Sundays we will continue to think about Christ’s offer of living water and to drink more deeply from the WELL of living water: to drink from the WELL of Christ’s Work, to drink from the WELL of the Energy of God’s Spirit, from the WELL of Christ’s Lordship in your life, and from His WELL of unending, unfailing Love. Maybe there is someone who you can invite to come to church with you to hear about the God who knows our thirst and provides living water. Maybe you can fill your water jug and take it out to share with those who may never come into this church.
Closing Song: “Living Waters” Song that invites you to come and drink these living waters…
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