What is Living Water?

T. A. McMahon:

We are going through the gospel of John, with a particular emphasis on the gospel and the salvation we have in Christ.  And as we have been saying, our life in Christ begins with our understanding of the gospel and our acceptance of it by faith.  Dave, we are going to pick up with John:4:7There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink.
See All....  I will start reading.  “There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water:  Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink.  (For his disciples were gone away unto the city of buy meat.)  Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.”  Dave, we mentioned that a little bit before.  The Samaritans, they were religiously and, I guess, ethnically they were a mixed breed.  And, the Jews—

Dave Hunt:

Looked down on them, despised them and had nothing to do them.

T. A. McMahon:

No, but just to relate that to the story of the Good Samaritan, that was kind of a chide, an exhortation.

Dave Hunt:

A story that Jesus told.

T. A. McMahon:

Right.  So obviously, Jesus did not look upon the Samaritans as his kinsfolk did.  “Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.”

Dave Hunt

Are you going to read the next verse?

T. A. McMahon:

Yes, why?  I ran out of verses.

Dave Hunt:

“The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep:  from whence than hast thou that living water?  Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?  Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:  But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.  The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.”Now there is obviously a little miscommunication, a misunderstanding here on the part of the woman.  Jesus is using something physical to teach a spiritual truth and obviously, Jesus is not talking about holy water, he is not talking about H2O, that’s very important to understand, it’s very elementary but very important to understand because this relates to sacramentalism.  You get involved in witchcraft, voodoo, or whatever, you know, there is a burning of candles, there’s certain physical acts that are supposed to be powerful, they are potent, even potions, to drink and so forth but they have some power.  No physical thing has spiritual power and Jesus is teaching that, among other things.  That was the lie of the serpent in the garden.  Eve thought this physical fruit would make her wise and that was really the beginning of materialism and sacramentalism and so forth.  So, Jesus is obviously not talking about physical water and this would take us—and who knows when we might ever get there, Tom.  But to chapter 6, where he said, Except you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life in you and the Catholic church says, We take that literally and we have the power to turn that wafer into the physical body and blood of Christ and that is essential.  You must ingest him in your stomach in order to get this spiritual life.  That is the opposite of what Jesus is teaching.  That’s the one place where they say we must take it literally.  When he says I am a vine and you’re the branches, that’s not literal.  When I’m the shepherd, you’re the sheep, that’s not literal.  When he says, I am the door, by me if any man enter in and so forth, but he is not a literal door.  Now, so he’s teaching something spiritual and in John 7—and who knows if we would ever, ever get to that, Tom.

T. A. McMahon:

Hey Dave, come on now. Let’s enjoy it verse by verse.

Dave Hunt:

Yeah, we’re moving along, we’re moving along.  But Jesus says, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.”  Again, obviously, he doesn’t mean physical water.  When he says, “I am the bread of life that came down from heaven.  If a man eat of this…”—he said that in John 6, in fact.  “…If a man eat of this he will never hunger, he will never thirst.  You eat of me; you will never hunger and never thirst.”  Now, if he is speaking physically and if the Catholic priest has the power to turn this wafer into the body and blood of Jesus and they physically ingest it in their stomach, they would never need to do it again.  Furthermore, they would never hunger or thirst for anything again.  Obviously, Jesus is speaking of something far more important than the physical life.  He is speaking of spiritual life, eternal life and that’s what he is trying to open this woman to.  Give me a drink.  Well, she thinks he’s talking about this physical water, which indeed he is—

T. A. McMahon:

Dave, in keeping with my modus operandi, I want to take you back to verse 10, because there is a phrase here that I think is really important.  “Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God….”—So, this should have alerted her to the fact that, wait a minute, I am not talking about what you think I’m talking about or you’re misunderstanding it.  “The gift of God.”

Dave Hunt:

The gift of God and who it is that’s speaking to you.  You don’t realize who I am, you don’t realize the gift of God and, you know, the gist of God is eternal life the scripture tells us, that’s what he wants to talks about.  Now, a gift, you can’t earn a gift, you can’t merit it, you can’t pay for it, a gift would not be a gift.  If you offer—I guess we have probably said this before on the program, Tom, but remember I offered you a painting.  It’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars, this is a Rembrandt, long lost that we just discovered in our basement, and you insist on giving me a penny in exchange for it.  You have done two things:  You have rejected the gift, number one.  You offer God anything for the gift of eternal life which Christ bought with the price of his blood, his life, his payment of the penalty for our sins, the infinite penalty and people offer God their church membership, their good deeds, their prayers, their penance, whatever it is, their sacraments—

T. A. McMahon:

Right, their repetition of things, thinking that’s going to make—

Dave Hunt:

Prayers over and over and over, rosary, whatever it may be, you offer God anything for his gift of eternal life, you have refused the gift, you have insulted God and you have devalued this gift to the level of what you think it was worth or what you could earn for it.  So, a gift has to be accepted, you can’t earn it, you can’t merit it.  So, he says, If you knew the gift of God and who I am, you would ask me and I would give you living water.  Not H2O, but I would give you eternal life and you would never ever thirst again.  Now, he is talking in her terms.  He’s drawing her out and now when she says well; give me that water so I’ll never have to come back here.  She still doesn’t understand.  Now, Jesus is going to get her attention.  “Jesus saith to her,” verse 16,—hey, we are moving really fast here, Tom, today.

T. A. McMahon:

Good, well, that’s okay.

Dave Hunt:

“Jesus saith unto her, Go call thy husband, and come hither.”  Whoa, wait a minute.  “The woman answered and said, I have no husband, Jesus said unto her, Thou has well said, I have no husband.  For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom that now hast is not thy husband:  in that saidst thou truly.”  You’re telling the truth.  “The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet.”  She’s trying to change the subject now.  “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.  Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.  Ye worship ye know not what:  we know what we worship:  for salvation is of the Jews.  But the hour cometh and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth:  for the Father seeketh such to worship him.”There’s just an awful lot there, Tom.  I read too much, more than we can cover but why don’t you go ahead and pick it up here.

T. A. McMahon:

Well Dave, I think about her being impressed with the fact that Jesus understood something that—how could he possibly have known these things?  I think back also, to Isaiah, particularly chapters 41 through 47, actually, where God alone says that he is the God of prophesy and his challenge to the false gods, or to those who were relying upon their idols to get them information like that.  Now, my point here is that today we have the world presenting things like psychics and fortune tellers and seers of all different kinds and I think it’s interesting that Satan promotes that stuff because it’s like the serpent said in the garden, did God say? and then, you know, you will not surely die.  In other words he is contradicting God at every point that he can and this is today, these ideas that anybody can be a psychic or that you can develop this is really a slap in the face to the God of prophesy, he alone, can do these things.

Dave Hunt:

Well, Satan has some limited power, he has some limited knowledge and his psychics, his fortune tellers are not accurate.  Jesus isn’t trying to impress her with this power, but he wants her to know who he is and I guess we will get to that the next time.