Our Redeemer Lutheran Church
Quincy, IL
Rev. Larry D. Troxel
The Third Sunday in Lent
Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 8:00 & 10:15 a.m.
“Thirsty? Jesus Gives the Water That Is Eternal Life.”
(John 4:10, 13–14)
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Are you thirsty? There are so many products that tout their ability to quench your thirst. But they leave you thirsty immediately
after you have consumed them And none of them can quench your thirst for the rest of your life and for eternity. Lemonade
tastes great, but eventually you are thirsty again. Iced tea actually pulls fluid out of the cells of your body, leaving you thirsty.
he sweetness of cocoa demands a follow-up glass of water. Alcoholic beverages used in moderation may be enjoyable but
they don’t quench your thirst for long. Even specially formulated sports and energy drinks satisfy your thirst for only a limited period of time.
Now put yourself in the place of Jesus for a moment. He and His disciples doing something most Jews of His day avoided.
They were traveling through the region known as Samaria. The hostility between Samaritans and Jews was so strong that many
who traveled between Galilee in the north and Judea in the south went out of their way to avoid Samaria by traveling on the east bank of the Jordan River.
Jesus had a divinely ordained purpose for the route He was traveling. And so it was that He came to the well outside
the village of Sychar. There He asked a Samaritan woman to give Him a drink of water. And while we can read about
the extended conversation between Jesus and the woman, we never are told if she actually gave Jesus the drink of water
for which He had asked or not.
Thirsty? Jesus was, and yet He had something more important in mind. Instead of being focused on Himself and His own thirst,
Jesus directed His full attention to the Samaritan woman and her great need, and to the other residents of Sychar and their great need.
Once again Jesus makes it clear that He did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.1
Now put yourself in the place of this Samaritan woman. She certainly was not the most highly regarded woman in the village of Sychar.
As her conversation with Jesus revealed, she had been married and divorced five times and now was living with a man to whom
she was not married. Even by the lax moral standards of our own society, she was notorious. That is why she came to draw water
from the well at Noon. By going at Noon she was able to avoid the hateful stares and the unkind comments of the other women
of the village. The respectable women came in the morning and again at sundown. Later, when this woman said to the other
residents of Sychar, “Come, see a Man who told me all that I ever did,”2
the other villagers knew that there was much to tell.
Thirsty? Jesus was thirsty. More importantly, He knew just how spiritually thirsty, how spiritually dehydrated this Samaritan woman was.
Jesus amazed her by speaking to her, for the Jews and the Samaritans usually had no dealings with one another. For that reason,
she was even more amazed that Jesus asked her for a drink. She was further amazed that Jesus spoke to her at all, for the rules of
polite society at that time prohibited a man from speaking to any woman in public, even his own wife. Jesus came as Savior,
and in His divinely ordained role He broke through all the taboos and cultural barriers in order to fulfill His mission of seeking and saving the lost.
So Jesus said to the woman, “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.”3
Jesus identified what the woman did not know: “the gift of God” and who Jesus is. Her spiritual ignorance
resulted in her own great spiritual thirst, a thirst she did not even realize, yet a thirst which was evidenced by her immoral life.
Holy Scripture says, “The natural person,” the unbeliever, “does not accept the things of the Spirit of God,
for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”4
The Samaritan woman did not recognize or understand her own great spiritual thirst. Simply put, spiritually dead people don’t know that they are dead.
As we go about our daily lives, we have contact with people who do not realize just how spiritually thirsty they are. And yet they are attempting
to quench their spiritual thirst with things that do not satisfy, with things that cannot quench their spiritual thirst once and for all. Spiritual thirst,
even unrecognized spiritual thirst, drives people to search in many places without ever finding the living water which quenches their thirst forever.
The shelves at bookstores are filled with all manner of spiritual self-help books. Some cable television channels are devoted entirely to spiritual
programming. The multitude of denominations and of non-denominational congregations provide a spiritual smorgasbord at which the spiritually
thirsty person can sample a wide variety of formulas. Many are the ones who purport to be Christ-centered, yet serve up teachings that amount to
legalism in which the quenching of spiritual thirst is said to result from a person’s following a list of principles and procedures.
And in the end, spiritual thirst remains unquenched.
The “gift of God” of which Jesus spoke first and foremost is Jesus Himself. We recall the words which Jesus spoke
to Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish
but have eternal life.”5 The gift God has given us is His Son, our Savior Christ Jesus.
Further, the gift which God gives is the gift of saving faith in Christ Jesus. That is what Holy Scripture says: “By grace
you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”6
And it is in connection with these two gifts — Christ Jesus and saving faith in Him — that we receive the gift
of which Jesus was speaking to the Samaritan women, life that is new every day and that is eternal. Jesus said,
“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”7
Jesus offered the Samaritan woman the water which quenches thirst forever. But she did not know who Jesus is
and she did not know what He meant by “living water.” So Jesus explained what He was saying.
“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 forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water
welling up to eternal life.”8
Jesus completely satisfies; He quenches forever our spiritual thirst. He does this by giving us a life that is brand new
and which He keeps new every day. He said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again,
born of water and the Spirit.”9 Speaking of the source and origin of this new life
which we receive in Christ Jesus, Scripture says that we “were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh
nor of the will of man, but of God.”10 In and through Holy Baptism
God has given us the rebirth that gives saving faith in Jesus and makes us His new people. Through the forgiveness
of all sins which we receive in Christ Jesus, God keeps us new every day and every night. And through faith in Christ Jesus
we have the assurance that we will live with Him forever.
There is only one spiritual thirst quencher and He is Jesus. He satisfies our spiritual thirst completely.
When we received saving faith in Christ Jesus we were born again to a life that is new and which never ends.
Jesus keeps us alive forever. He said, “The water that I will give him will become in him
a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The new life which we have received
through faith in Christ Jesus goes on forever. Not even physical death can interrupt this new life nor destroy it.
Do you know someone who is spiritually thirsty? The living water which Jesus gives is free and it completely satisfies.
Offer the person you know the water that Jesus gives, the living water that wells up to eternal life. Invite that person
to worship with us. Invite that person to study God’s Word with us. Our next Adult Class will begin in April.
Invite that person to come with you. The offer Jesus made to the woman at the well in Samaria is the offer
He still extends today: “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 water that I will give will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Amen.
1. Matthew 20:28
2.John 4:29
3. John 4:10
4. 1 Corinthians 2:14
5. John 3:16
6. Ephesians 2:8
7. John 10:10
8. John 4:13–14
9. John 3:7, 5
10. John 1:13
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