As we prepare to look again in God’s precious Word, I remind my own heart, and I remind you again, of that indispensable principle of all Bible study: total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit.
It’s interesting that in the Bible there’s only one time that it mentions that our Lord Jesus rejoiced in His spirit. I’m not saying He never rejoiced beside this time, but this is the only record of it. I’d like to read that verse. It’s from Luke 10:21.
At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said,
“I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent,
and revealed them to infants.
Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight.”
The only time the Bible mentions that our Lord Jesus rejoiced in spirit—perhaps, as one commentator said, that He spun around with sheer delight—was when He thought of the way of revelation. He said, “I’ll reveal these things to babes. I’ll show these things to infants.” How that thrilled His heart, and how that thrills His heart this evening. He delights to reveal these things to babes.
There’s no way that you can work up a childlike attitude, or I can work up a childlike attitude. That’s a gift of the Lord. He’s promised that if we would come as babes, as infants, He would reveal these things to us.
Isaiah 41:17 says:
The afflicted and the needy are seeking water, but there is none,
And their tongue is parched with thirst;
I, the Lord, will answer them Myself.
Is that a wonderful verse? When we are that thirsty and parched, “I, the Lord, will answer them Myself.” He’s the only One who can satisfy that thirst.
So let’s bow together before the Lord, and then we’ll look again in His Word.
Our Father, we thank You so much that we have the Holy Spirit, and that You have promised to show unto us the things of Christ. You have promised to unveil the Lord Jesus and give us the revelation of Him. So we wait again this evening and pray that, once again, our eyes might be opened a little wider and that we might have a larger vision of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Thank You that You have taken it upon Yourself to answer our every thirst. We pray that all that it means that Christ lives on in us as a fountain springing up, that we might begin to enter into that even in a fresh way tonight.
We give this meditation unto You. We ask You to protect Your children from everything that’s not from You; that You would minister that which is from You; and even apart from this instrument, speak directly anything You desire to speak. We trust You tonight that You’d minister unto us, satisfy our thirst, and revive Your inheritance when it’s parched. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, once again, we won’t do a lot of review, but to remind you of the big things: our Lord Jesus claimed to be the living water, claimed to be the answer to all of our thirst and the thirst of the whole wide world.
I’d like to read again those key verses, even though we’re probably familiar with them: John 4:13-14.
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again;
but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst;
but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”
Our emphasis on that particular verse has to do with the promise that in us there would be a well, a fountain. The Greek says, “leaping, gushing,” leaping up into everlasting life.
Then John 7:37-39:
On that last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying,
“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.
He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said,
‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”
But this He spoke of the Spirit,
whom those who believed in Him were to receive;
for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
As I suggested, there is this wonderful advance on the truth in John 4. In both places, He identifies Himself as the Giver of living water and the living water He gives. But in John 7, He takes us a little further. It’s not only in us—a well, leaping, bubbling, gushing up into everlasting life—but it’s rivers through us, pouring out, gushing out. That life goes forth to minister to the thirst of the world.
This morning, I tried to lay the groundwork, just looking very basically at what is underneath all of this great promise of the Lord. I suggested two principles, so simple.
The Lord Jesus is the One who sought out the woman. It was not the woman who sought out the Lord. She responded to Him, and that’s what seeking is: responding to His seeking you. He’s ever the first Seeker, and you respond to that by seeking after Him.
When this story began, I’m quite sure she didn’t even know she had a thirst for eternal things, for spiritual things—not until Jesus showed up. But He’s faithful to show up. He’s the One who shows up and reveals Himself to the guiltiest of sinners. He doesn’t hide Himself. He doesn’t skirt around us.
We don’t deserve any more than she deserved to have living water. We don’t deserve it. But instead, He deliberately plants Himself in the very path that He knows our thirst will take so that He can sit down and have a private conversation with us about this living water. He’s the Initiator.
Then we also saw that He is the One who invites. He said, “If you would ask Me, I would give you this living water.” It’s yours for the asking. It’s yours for the taking. As soon as she asked Him, He said, “I am He,” and He revealed Himself as Messiah. No delay. He delights to unveil Himself.
There is not even the slightest need to overcome any reluctance in God. He has no reluctance. The reality is, by faith, we lay hold of an infinite willingness. No reluctance—all willingness—and He then pours out Himself.
When we left off this morning, I was calling attention to that wonderful paradox: by satisfying your heart, He is satisfied. We minister to His pleasure by taking His gift. If you want to make Him happy, receive what He is offering, and that is His whole life.
Every time we say yes to the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, we bring unspeakable joy and satisfaction to His heart.
What I’d like to meditate on this evening is a further development of that wonderful truth: the Lord in us as a well, springing up into everlasting life.
John 4:10 says:
Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God,
and who it is that saith unto you, ‘Give Me to drink,’
thou wouldest have asked of Him,
and He would have given thee living water.”
And again, John 4:13-14:
Jesus answered and said unto her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again;
but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give shall never thirst;
but the water that I shall give shall become in him a well of water,
springing up into everlasting life.”
In order to get this before your heart, I’d like to share two simple words, because the great truth revolves around just two words in this text.
The first is in John 4:11:
The woman said to Him, “Sir, Thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Whence then hast Thou that living water?”
The word I want you to notice in verse 11 is the word well. “The well is deep.” The Greek word translated “well” here means a pit. Every time that word is used in the New Testament except for here, it is translated “pit.” That’s what that word means. The pit is deep.
We would call it a cistern. A cistern is not a female Christian—you know, you’ve got brethren and sister. It’s not that. It’s an artificial reservoir for storing water. A cistern can be a tank. A cistern can be a hole in the ground. The main characteristic of a cistern is that it does not have its own water supply. It must be supplied from outside. It can receive rain; it can receive melting snow; but there has to be something on the outside that fills a cistern.
In this case, the woman said, “The pit is deep. The cistern is deep.” How deep? We don’t know. All the information we have about Jacob’s well comes out of John 4. It is not mentioned in the Old Testament. We read that Abraham dug wells. We read that Isaac dug wells. But there’s no place in the Old Testament that says Jacob dug a well. We assume he did because we have Jacob’s well here.
If you go to the Holy Land, what they show you as Jacob’s well is very ancient. Originally, they say it was over one hundred feet deep; now they say it is about seventy-five feet deep, perhaps even less. Originally, when Jacob dug it two thousand years before this, maybe it was spring-fed. We don’t know. That’s a possibility.
You almost think it was because the woman says in verse 12 that Jacob drank from it, all his sons drank from it, and all his animals drank from it. It sounds like there was a good supply of water there. But by the time we get to the New Testament, there is no question about it: it was a cistern. It was still called a well, but it was a cistern. It was not spring-fed. It depended upon rainwater and melting snow—water from the outside.
Here’s an interesting piece of trivia. Andrew Bonar, the Scottish preacher, went in the late 1800s to visit Jacob’s well. He was very interested, and he laid his Bible right there on the top of the well. He leaned over to look down, bumped his Bible, and it fell into the well. So when you go to see Jacob’s well, you can say, “I know a Bible that’s down there—Andrew Bonar’s Bible.” That’s just for information.
A cistern is just a pit to catch water in. It has no outside source. I believe that Jacob’s pit—that cistern—was sort of a mirror of this woman’s life, because her life was certainly a cistern that did not hold water.
Her tragic story of five husbands and the adulterous relationship she was in when she talked to the Lord Jesus certainly was proof that she had drunk from cisterns that had run dry. No question about it.
She needed some kind of outside source for her own thirst and satisfaction. It’s a terrible frustration to try to satisfy an unquenchable thirst from a cistern that often runs dry.
It must have rocked her to the foundations when Jesus said in John 4:16, “Go, call your husband.” I don’t know what went through her mind at the time. I try to enter into these things when I read. I’ve got a wild imagination. I try to get into their shoes, and I wonder if she thought about her first wedding day.
“Go, call your husband.” My guess is she was probably young at that time. Like all young brides, she probably had many dreams: “This is going to be a wonderful marriage, and we’re going to be so happy together. Maybe we’re going to have children,” and all the dreams that come with a first marriage.
Then how dry that cistern became. I suppose after that she thought, “This time it’s going to be different. This one’s going to work.” Then it dried up again. Then another one: “Oh, this time it’s going to be so different.” You can enter into this poor woman as she drank from cistern after cistern, until finally she got so frustrated that she said, “I’m not going to even try again.” So she just moved in with this guy, or he moved in with her—whatever.
When she spoke to the Lord Jesus, in a literal way she had a pit in her stomach, because she had a cistern, a pit, and it constantly ran dry.
Now, in the light of that, notice John 4:14:
Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst;
but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water
springing up into eternal life.
It’s unfortunate that English translates both of those words as “well.” “The well is deep,” she said, and here, “I’ll give you a well.” But they are not at all the same Greek word.
The word in verse 11 refers to a pit or cistern. The word in verse 14 means a fountain. Jesus spoke of a fountain that would leap—a bubbling fountain that would gush and never run dry. A fountain of fresh water, living water.
In other words, Jesus promised her that He would sink in her heart, in place of a cistern that often runs dry, this marvelous well that did not depend on any externals to keep it full or to have water in it.
Remember, both here in John 4 and in John 7, Jesus is talking about a Person: “shall be in you a well.” When He says in verse 10, “If you knew the gift of God, He’d give you living water,” He was talking about Himself.
He makes it crystal clear in John 7:39. After promising that through the believer would come raging rivers, He identifies it:
This He spake of the Spirit,
whom those who believed in Him were to receive.
It’s a Person. It’s the life of God. If you’re going to understand the heart of the Lord, the well is a Person and the water is His life. It’s the life of God springing up, the life of God bubbling up, the life of God leaping up into eternal life.
The promise the Lord gave was that He Himself would deliver her from cisterns that needed an external source and were constantly running dry. “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst.” That expression, “into everlasting life,” is another way of saying, “which will never run dry.”
In contrast to the pit, in contrast to the cistern, in contrast to the well she went to, He was promising her a life that would replace her life. A life in her. She already had life, but now she had a new life. That new life would rise up, leap up, and replace her own life.
This is not nearly as strong in English as it is in the original. In the Greek, it is a triple negative. In English, a double negative ends up positive. If I say, “I don’t want none,” you know I want some. “Don’t give me no dessert”—well, you know what I want. Actually, I like Devil Dogs. I get hung up on those Devil Dogs all the time. You probably see that anyway.
But in Greek, if you have a double negative, it is strong. If you have three negatives, it is even stronger. If you have four negatives, it is stronger still. If you have five—and that’s the most you have in the New Testament—it is as strong as strong can be.
There is only one place where God strings five negatives together: Hebrews 13:5, when He promises to never leave you. He put five negatives together so that you would know the strength of His promise.
One translation renders it:
I will not, I will not cease to sustain and uphold you.
I will not, I will not, I will not let you down.
Another says:
I will never, no never, I will not, never forsake you.
That’s what is in the Greek. It is that powerful.
You have that kind of power falling from the lips of Jesus as He talked to this woman: “You will never thirst.” He uses a triple negative in order to drive it home.
One translation of John 4:14 says:
Whoever takes a drink of the water which I shall give him
shall positively not thirst, no, never.
He just had to get all of those in there: “positively not thirst, no, never.” And the water that I shall give him shall become in him a spring of water gushing up into eternal life.
So intent is the Lord Jesus on communicating His desire to satisfy completely.
That is the verse, by the way, that caused me to do that introductory study identifying true thirst, because He said, “You’ll never, never thirst.” I had a problem with that, because I always thirst. Always, always, always.
But then I began to see that you’ll never thirst this way. You’ll never have to thirst for satisfaction. But, oh, praise God, you can thirst from satisfaction.
You’re never going to come to the end of 1 Peter 2:2:
Like newborn babies, desire the sincere milk of the Word,
that you might grow thereby.
And you’ll never come to the place where Matthew 5:6 is not real anymore:
Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after righteousness,
for they shall be filled.
We’re always going to thirst, but now it is from this position: from satisfaction.
Brothers, I know a little bit about some of your background. You’re not novices. In fact, I get on the level of earth intimidated when I’m invited to share with you, because I know you have drunk more, walked closer, and tasted more of the Lord than I have. I understand that.
The problem is that some of these simple things can become old hat to you. I’m not giving you anything new. You’ve heard all of this about the life of the Lord. But may God bring every one of us back to the thrilling reality of what our Lord Jesus is promising here, because thousands of Christians have wandered away from this simple truth.
It’s easy. It’s simple. It’s wonderful. But is it our experience?
Is the life of the Lord leaping up, dancing, bubbling, gushing in your life? Filling you so that you have no thirst like this: “There’s got to be more. I haven’t arrived.” Is there anything like that in your life? That is God’s plan for every one of us.
I told you this morning that all God’s commands are invitations. He asked her for a drink because He wanted her to ask Him for a drink. Every time He gives us a command, He is expecting you to ask Him for the very thing He has asked you to do.
When He is allowed to answer that, when He is allowed to give you what He requires, that is His life. That’s the bubbling. That’s the fountain.
When I don’t have to depend on my strength, my wisdom, my resources, my vows, or my willpower—but He loves through me, He forgives through me, He provides through me, He obeys through me, and He speaks through me—that’s His life. That’s the bubbling of His life, His life replacing my life.
When His life bubbles up, that’s the fountain He’s talking about. In you will be a well, and it’s His life. It’s another way of saying:
I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
It’s the same thing. That’s the life that bubbles when it’s His life living.
Brothers, that’s a fountain you can carry to work with you because it’s in your heart. You can carry that around when there’s bad language all around you, when there’s injustice coming your way, when there’s selfishness and pressure. You’ve got a fountain, which is His life, and it works in the workplace.
That’s a fountain you can carry to school with you, where there’s license all around, no fear of the Lord, cheating, lying, off-color stories, wild behavior, and blasphemy. That student who’s a Christian has a fountain inside, and he doesn’t have to live by his own life anymore. It’s the life of the Lord Jesus.
That’s a fountain you can carry with you to the hospital. When you get that doctor’s report, when there’s sadness on the level of earth, pain, and fear, there’s a fountain to deal with all of that.
That’s a fountain you can carry with you to the assembly. Sometimes in the assembly you’re going to face things. Sometimes there are jealousies, divisions, partiality, hypocrisy, and many times uncrucified flesh. But you have a fountain in your heart. It’s the life of the Lord Jesus, and you don’t have to respond with your own life.
In the crowd, I have a fountain inside. On a stormy sea, I have a fountain. In the closet, I have a fountain. In the calm, I have a fountain. In the day of prosperity, I have a fountain. In the day of adversity, I have a fountain in my heart.
It’s the life of Christ. He lives to live. He lives so that He might live in you and live in me.
This is a fountain you can carry with you into old age. This is a fountain you can carry with you to the nursing home. It’s a fountain you carry with you to the morgue. Bless God, this is a fountain. This is the life of the Lord.
It’s not a cistern out there somewhere that needs some extra supply. It’s in your heart and in mine.
In order to make this intensely practical, we can use word pictures and talk about fountains and bubbles and all that kind of thing, but what does it mean practically to have the life of God living in me, bubbling up in me, a well of water?
I’m going to illustrate from a couple of pictures in this story. Now, I don’t want you to misunderstand. I am not suggesting that God inspired these illustrations, or that the Holy Spirit gave these pictures and this is exactly what they mean. This is a teaching aid. It’s a gimmick. I’m trying to use this as a memory aid to help you remember.
The illustrations are man-made, but the principles are God’s principles and are true to the balance of Scripture.
The Lord set this woman free that day and became in her a well springing up into eternal life. Here are my three illustrations:
John 4:15 says:
The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water,
so that I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.”
John 4:28-29 says:
So the woman left her waterpot,
and went into the city and said to the men,
“Come, see a Man who told me all the things that I have done;
this is not the Christ, is it?”
That waterpot was not metal or tin, like a pail. It was actually made out of animal skin, usually goat skin. They would have three bars across the top to keep the mouth open. It was a skin bucket.
The Lord wants to deliver us from buckets made out of skin that constantly need to be refilled. He also wants to deliver us from ropes. “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water?”
Having Christ living in me as a fountain bubbling up means I am finally free from cisterns; free from buckets made out of skin that need to be refilled; and free from tugging, pulling, ropes, lines, labor, and all the effort to take my skin bucket and fill it from a cistern that needs an external source and always runs dry.
Number one: this woman was delivered from cisterns that needed an outside source and constantly ran dry. That’s just another way of saying only Jesus satisfies.
We don’t have to frustrate ourselves, running from one cistern to another, trying to get what only Jesus can give. Until the Lord opens our hearts to see Christ as that fountain, as that