'Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and
who it is that saith unto thee, Give Me to drink; thou wouldest have
asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.'—JOHN iv. 10.
This Gospel has two characteristics seldom found together: deep thought
and vivid character-drawing. Nothing can be more clear-cut and dramatic
than the scene in the chapter before us. There is not a word of
description of this Samaritan woman. She paints herself, and it is not
a beautiful picture. She is apparently of the peasant class, from a
little village nestling on the hill above the plain, come down in the
broiling sunshine to Jacob's well. She is of mature age, and has had a
not altogether reputable past. She is frivolous, ready to talk with
strangers, with a tongue quick to turn grave things into jests; and yet
she possesses, hidden beneath masses of unclean vanities, a conscience
and a yearning for something better than she has, which Christ's words
awoke, and which was finally so enkindled as to make her fit to receive
the full declaration of His Messiahship, which Pharisees and priests
could not be trusted with.
I need scarcely do more than remind you of the way in which the
conversation between this strangely assorted pair began. The solitary
Jew, sitting spent with travel on the well, asks for a draught of
water; not in order to get an opening for preaching, but because He
needs it. She replies with an exclamation of light wonder, half a jest
and half a sarcasm, and challenging a response in the same tone.
But Christ lifts her to a higher level by the words of my text, which
awed levity, and prepared for a fuller revelation. 'Thou dost wonder
that I, being a Jew, ask drink of thee, a Samaritan. If thou knewest
who I am, thy wonder at My asking would be more. If thou knewest what I
have to give, we should change places, and thou wouldest ask, and I
should bestow.'
So then, we have here gift, Giver, way of getting, and ignorance that
hinders asking. Let us look at these.
I. First, the gift of God. Now it is quite clear that our Lord means
the same thing, whatever it may be, by the two expressions, the 'gift
of God' and the 'living water.' For, unless He does, the whole sequence
of my text falls to pieces. 'Living water' was suggested, no doubt, by
the circumstances of the moment. There, in the well, was an
ever-springing source, and, says He, a like supply, ever welling up for
thirsty lips and foul hands, ever sweet and ever sufficient, God is
ready to give.
We may remember how, all through Scripture, we hear the tinkle of these
waters as they run. The force of the expression is to be gathered
largely from the Old Testament and the uses of the metaphor there. It
has been supposed that by the 'living water' which God gives is here
meant some one specific gift, such as that of the Holy Spirit, which
sometimes is expressed by the metaphor. Rather I should be disposed to
say the 'living water' is eternal life. 'With Thee is the fountain of
life.' And so, in the last resort, the gift of God is God Himself.
Nothing else will suffice for us, brethren. We need Him, and we need
none but Him.
Our Lord, in the subsequent part of this conversation, again touches
upon this great metaphor, and suggests one or two characteristics,
blessings, and excellences of it. 'It shall be _in_ him,' it is
something that we may carry about with us in our hearts, inseparable
from our being, free from all possibility of being filched away by
violence, being rent from us by sorrows, or even being parted from us
by death. What a man has outside of him he only seems to have. Our only
real possessions are those which have passed into the substance of our
souls. All else we shall leave behind. The only good is inward good;
and this water of life slakes our thirst because it flows into the
deepest place of our being, and abides there for ever.
Oh! you that are seeking your satisfaction from fountains that remain
outside of you after all your efforts, learn that all of them, by
reason of their externality, will sooner or later be 'broken cisterns
that can hold no water.' And I beseech you, if you want rest for your
souls and stilling for their yearnings, look for it there, where only
it can be found, in Him, who not only dwells in the heavens to rule and
to shower down blessings, but enters into the waiting heart and abides
there, the inward, and therefore the only real, possession and riches.
'It shall be in him a fountain of water.'
It is 'springing up'—with an immortal energy, with ever fresh fulness,
by its own inherent power, needing no pumps nor machinery, but ever
welling forth its refreshment, an emblem of the joyous energy and
continual freshness of vitality, which is granted to those who carry
God in their hearts, and therefore can never be depressed beyond
measure, nor ever feel that the burden of life is too heavy to bear, or
its sorrows too sharp to endure.
It springs up 'into eternal life,' for water must seek its source, and
rise to the level of its origin, and this fountain within a man, that
reaches up ever towards the eternal life from which it came, and which
it gives to its possessor, will bear him up, as some strong spring will
lift the clods that choked its mouth, will bear him up towards the
eternal life which is native to it, and therefore native to him.
Brethren, no man is so poor, so low, so narrow in capacity, so limited
in heart and head, but that he needs a whole God to make him restful.
Nothing else will. To seek for satisfaction elsewhere is like sailors
who in their desperation, when the water-tanks are empty, slake their
thirst with the treacherous blue that washes cruelly along the battered
sides of their ship. A moment's alleviation is followed by the
recurrence, in tenfold intensity, of the pangs of thirst, and by
madness, and death. Do not drink the salt water that flashes and rolls
by your side when you can have recourse to the fountain of life that is
with God.
'Oh!' you say, 'commonplace, threadbare pulpit rhetoric.' Yes! Do you
live as if it were true? It will never be too threadbare to be dinned
into your head until it has passed into your lives and regulated them.