Good Morning!  I want to begin this morning by sharing a once in a life time experience that I recently had.  Many of you have heard from Pastor James a few stories about our recent trip to New York City for a seminary course.  One evening James and I had the privilege of attending a Yankee’s baseball game, the Bronx.  That in of itself was quite an experience because New Yorkers are hard-core sports fans, and Yankee fans are the most fanatical of them all.  However, in being at the baseball game I never that I would experience what I did.  I had been telling James all week how excited I was to go to a Yankee’s game and to eat a hot dog at the game.  There’s something about a hotdog at a baseball game, it’s just part of the experience.  He of course had made fun of me all week because to him eating a hotdog would be similar to a Jewish person enjoying a good slice of bacon.  It’s not gonna happen.  So we arrived at Yankee stadium a good hour and half before the game so that we could watch batting practice. And we assumed that they would have something other then greasy stadium fair for James to eat.  However, much to his chagrin and much to my enjoyment, all they had were basic ballpark fair, hot dog, nacho’s, peanuts and pop-corn.  So I experienced something with James that even his wife had never seen, James eating a hot dog.  Now he will tell you that it was an Italian Sausage on a roll, but trust me it was a hotdog in it’s truest form.  So this summer if you have the Penner clan over to your house for a little BBQ prepare James an Italian, sausage and you too could share in my joy!

I am quite thankful; as I’m sure you are as well, that the flood danger for the Fraser Valley has subsided for the time being.  I am thankful, because the tie in this morning with taking about “living water” on the weekend of an expected major flood seemed a little bit awkward to me.  

Today, as we continue in the sermon series, The Greatness and Awesome Glory of Jesus, we are looking at another incredible metaphor that Jesus uses to describe who he is, and the work that he is doing in our lives as he talks about “living water”.  

Jesus, was an incredible teacher.  The more time you spend reading through the gospels, looking at Jesus while he teaches the crowds, the Pharisee’s or his disciples you see that he is the master of using metaphors to make his point.  For example, Jesus’ teaching on being the bread of life has huge implications because we realize that as humans we need food survive.  Another great example is where he claims to the light of the world.  Jesus taught in a way that people listening to him then, and us, listening to him today could catch hold of these tangible metaphors and apply them to our lives.  
And so this morning we are looking at Jesus’ offer of living water. And again, we have to stop and admire how tangible this metaphor is for us today.  Water, so cool and refreshing on a hot day!  Water, that enables plants in our gardens to grow!  Water, that is at the core of needs for existence as humans.  Water, is what Jesus chooses to teach us about himself.  

Science tells us that 71% of the earth’s surface is covered in water.  Science tells us that our body mass in made up of approximately 70% water.  Water is a basic need for human existence, without water we can only survive three to four days.  Essentially, water equals life because without water, life cannot exist.  And it is this basic principle of life that Jesus, echoes in our spiritual lives as well.  

I would like to invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to John chapter 4.  

In John 4, we have the account of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.  I would like us to read this story together starting in verse one.

It is important for us to know that the apostle John gives us a different picture of Jesus then the other gospel writers do.  The preceding chapters to John 4 tell the account of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding, an interesting choice of first miracles John chooses to record.  Directly following the miracle of water into wine, John records for us the event where Jesus drives the merchants and moneychangers from the temple.  John 3, is the story of an interaction that Jesus has with a Pharisee named Nicodemus, and it takes place at night because Nicodemus, does not want to be seen taking with Jesus.  All of these stories, point to the fact that Jesus had an edge to him in his ministry.  He was not confined to the strict laws of Judaism, rather he was counter cultural, different in way that scarred his fellow religious leaders, and intrigued the marginalized and offered them hope for life.

All this leads into John chapter four, and it sets the tone for what Jesus is about to do.  John 4 begins by alluding to the fact that the Pharisee’s were taking a particular notice to the ministry of Jesus.  The attention that Jesus is receiving from the religious leaders is enough that he chooses to remove himself from the scrutiny of their eyes and to head to his home region of Galilee. 

Verse four states that “he had to go through Samaria” to get to Galilee.  Now a quick look at a map of Palestine would tell us that Samaria lies directly in between Judea, the area where Jesus is currently ministering and Galilee, where he is heading.  However, devote Jews, and most certainly rabbis, like Jesus, would avoid Samaria like it was the plague and take a three-day journey around the area.  Most of us know from the story of the Good Samaritan that the relationship between Jews and Samaritan’s, was filled with strife.  Jews despised the Samaritans because they had intermarried, losing their heritage as children of God.  Yet, it is into Samaria that Jesus goes; into the heart of century old conflict to proclaim that salvation is not only for the Jews, but also for the whole world.  

Now, Jesus could have gone to the Samaritan places of worship to preach his good news.  But instead he goes about it in a much more unconventional way.  John tells us that Jesus is tired and so he sits down at a well while his disciple’s head into a town to but some food.  As he sits their waiting, a woman comes out from the town to draw water, and John tells us that it was the sixth hour, which means its lunch time, the hottest part of the day, not the normal time for women to be coming to draw water from the well.  

Jesus engages this woman in conversation and asks her for a drink of water and see is floored because Jesus is breaking all kinds of societal rules.  First of all she is a Samaritan that in and of itself is major faux pas.  Secondly, she is a woman!  Men did not speak to women in public; in particular, rabbis did not speak with women because it could tarnish their reputation.  Thirdly, we learn from what John records that this is woman of questionable morality.  The fact that she is coming out to draw water at the hottest part of the day alludes to the fact that she has been ostracized by her own people.  We find out a bit later in the text that she has had five husbands and is currently living with another man who is not her husband.  To put a modern day spin on the context that Jesus puts himself into, imagine today Jesus going into a bar, and sitting down to have a drink with an exotic dancer.  Do you begin to see how, counter cultural, Jesus was?  

Now, if Jesus has not yet ruffled our feathers with the way he goes about teaching the good news, there is more yet.  Jesus engages this woman in an incredible dialogue about water, life and worship.  Yet it is his finally statement to the woman that is most shocking.  John 4:25 tells about how this woman is waiting for the Messiah to come and explain everything about life and faith.  Jesus’ response to her is simply that he is the Messiah that time is now.  The reason this is so crucial is because apart from Jesus’ trial, before Pilate, nowhere else in the gospels does Jesus come right out and say that he is the Messiah, except for right here.  

So we have Jesus, during his earthly ministry, relating to a social outcast among outcasts.  And it is to this woman that he decides to reveal that he is the Messiah.  To me this is incredible because I believe it speaks to the heart of God, as His word says in 2 Peter 3:9, “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”  This is the good news of Jesus Christ that salvation is not only for the Jews, but also for the Samaritans and for the Gentiles.  Salvation is for you and for me.  Jesus showed early in his ministry that he came to seek and save the lost that includes everyone.  And so today we can know that God’s message of mercy and grace is for all people, and like Jesus we need to make sure that we proclaim his message even into dark places.   

So this is the setting into which Jesus is speaking as he talks with the Samaritan woman at the well.  Let’s now look at the ramifications of what Jesus is says to this woman, and what he says to us.  

I would invite you to keep your Bible’s open to John 4 as we focus in on verses 13 and 14.  What began with Jesus simply asking a woman for a drink of water has become an incredible metaphor for understanding the relationship between mankind and God.  

1.)	We are thirsty people!
Jesus, as he is taking about the well of Jacob, where he and the woman are sitting, tells us that, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again.”  Verse 13.  In this statement he is telling us two things, first off, he is saying quite literally that when we drink regular H20, it will quench our thirst for a time, but we will need to drink again because like we established the human body can live without water.  However, like all of Jesus’ metaphors this one has a deeper and more invasive meaning as well.  

Jesus is telling the Samaritan woman and us today that we are thirsty people.  Yes, thirsty in the sense that we need water to survive, but also thirsty in the sense that we are in desperate need of God for our existence to be meaningful.  Jesus, goes right at the heart matter for each one of us, we are in need of God.  Why, because we were created to live in relationship with God.  

Here we need to go way back to the beginning to understand who we are, and how we were created to live.  I recently read a book that opened my eyes to see the full extent of the fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden.  There was one word, in particular that struck me between the eyes, the word “naked”.  We know the story, God created Adam and Eve and gave them the Garden as their domain to care for.  And as Genesis 2, ends the creation account, it says, “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”  Genesis 2:25.  

Now, I don’t know if you are like me, but I would assume that many us at some time or another have read this verse and tried to imagine what our society would be like if we all were naked.  And if you are like me, you get pretty freaked out and try your best not to think about it.  But within that thought there is incredible insight into the problem that is within each of our souls.  We were created to experience our life in relationship to our Creator.  In other words, we were created to have our needs for significance met by God.  And this is why Adam and Eve in the Garden were naked and felt no shame, because they were in a life giving relationship with God, all of the needs for acceptance and significance were met by God.  

Now, jump forward to right after they ate forbidden fruit.  Genesis 3:8-10 says, “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.  But the LORD called to the man, ‘Where are you?’  He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”  As soon as and Adam and Eve sinned against God, they realized that they were naked.  This life giving relationship that they were created to have with God, was marred.  Adam and Eve no longer held this intimate relationship with God, their need for significance was no longer met by God.  They were naked.

So as Jesus tells us in John 4 that we are thirsty, we are drawn back to story of fall, and we are reminded that we are naked, that the relationship of intimacy with God has been damaged.  Jeremiah 2:13 says it like this, “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”  Simply stated, in our sinful condition we have tried everything under the sun to fill the void left by the loss of intimacy with God.  We are thirsty, longing to be in the relationship with God that we were created for.  

Jesus draws this out for the Samaritan woman as he asks her to go and get her husband, knowing full well that she didn’t have a husband.  Knowing that she had searched for love and significances in the arms of five different men and not finding it had moved on to try with number six.  

And in so many ways, we are exactly like that Samaritan woman, searching for significance, to have our need for God met by people and things that will never compare.   

Tuesday morning as I was working on my message I gave our secretaries a good chuckle.  At 9:00am I walked past them on my way out the door and said, “I’m preaching on living water this coming Sunday so I’m on my way to Tim Horton’s for a coffee and some inspiration.”   Now I don’t now about you, but I struggle to drink eight cups of water a day, because even though I know that water is good for me and that I should drink it, if I’ve got the option of coffee, pop or juice, I will more often then not take one of those over water.

This is the same as what Jeremiah and Jesus were saying.  We are thirsty people and yet we try everything under sun to quench our thirst for God, and nothing, absolutely nothing can or ever will satisfy our need for God.  And yet we look for satisfaction in so many ways in money, status, vacations, hurried activity, sex, drugs, our spouse or friends.  Only to find out that nothing can fill the need we have for God.  

And so Jesus says, to us, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,” apart from God, you will never find satisfaction for you soul.
2.)	Jesus offers us Living Water
Jesus told the Samaritan woman that the water she was drinking, her current lifestyle of searching for significance in the arms of different men would leave her thirsty, but Jesus also sad that he could give her Living Water.  

Now, it is very easy for us to blow through, Jesus’ comment about offering us living water, chalking it up to salvation that we know came through Christ’s death on the cross.  And although this is a centrally important part of what Jesus is telling us, it does not give us the complete picture that he is getting at.  

The text makes it clear that the Samaritan woman does not get Jesus’ intended meaning when he talks about living water.  Living water to her was simply water that was flowing as opposed to the water in the well which was stagnant water.  The woman assumes that Jesus is telling her about a spring of water, where fresh flowing water is available.  Picture it this way, would you rather drink water from a desert well, or that of a crisp fresh mountain stream.  She is caught in the physical reality, and Jesus is communicating on spiritual reality.   

Today, we need to look at the spiritual reality of what Jesus is saying to us.  His metaphor of living water has a direct tie to salvation, but it is so much more then that as well.  Jesus is talking about restoring the intended relationship between man and God, by the giving of the Holy Spirit.  

Remember, that the greatest tragedy of the fall was that the intended relationship between God and man was marred because of sin.  Jesus, as he is taking about offering us living water is talking about restoring that relationship, through God’s Spirit coming to dwell in the lives of those who have put their faith in Christ.  

Listen to the words of Jesus in John 14:15-17, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth.  The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him.  But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. 

The gift of living water is this; that God’s Spirit will dwell in our lives, restoring the intended relationship between God and man, seeing that our need for significance is met by the only one who was ever intended to meet that need, God.   
3.)	Life Through the Spirit
The last part of the statement that Jesus makes to the Samaritan woman, gives us some more direction on what this “living water” is.  Jesus qualifies his statement about water that will quench thirst by saying, “Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  

I believe that the key phrase in this verse has a lot to tell us about our journey as Christians once we have accepted Christ and been filled with the Spirit.  Jesus talks the water he gives, becoming a spring of water that is welling up.  We need to recognize that Jesus is here is speaking in the active tense, telling us about something that will happen and continue to happen.  I believe Jesus, is commenting on the process of being changed by the Spirit into the people that God wants us to be.  

Listen to Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 3:18, “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”  The welling up that Jesus is talking about to the Samaritan woman is this being transformed by God’s Spirit.  

The work of the Spirit of God in our lives is that we are being transformed, that this living water is becoming in us a stream of water welling up to eternal life.  

Conclusion
Jesus’ statements about living water are echoed again in the book of John a couple chapters later, John 7:37-39 reads, “On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will from within him.’  By this he meant the Spirit who 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.  

Jesus’ message of living water is one that can bring life to our souls today.  

First of all, Jesus’ message is for those who have yet to put their faith in Him.  We were created to live in an intimate relationship with God, as witnessed between God and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  However, sin marred this perfect relationship and as human beings we have sought to replace our need for God with anything that will satisfy, that is sin.  But the truth is, nothing can quench the thirst that we have, the thirst that cries out for God to become real in our lives.  

To you this morning, Jesus is offering living water, water that can quench the thirst of your soul.  Jesus says in John 14:6, “I am the way the truth and the life.  No one comes to the father except through me.”  You were created to live in an intimate relationship with God, the only way back to that relationship is through his son Jesus Christ.  So Romans 10:9 tells us that, “if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in you heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”  For you today, the journey begins by confessing your need for God, realizing that you were created to live in an intimate relationship with him, and believing that this relationship can only be restored through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.  

Jesus’ offer of living water also has huge ramifications for those of us who have already believed in him, because Jesus says that this Living Water will create in us a stream of water that will well up to eternal life.  However, for too many people the reality is that stream of water has become only a trickle, or it has become a dried up creek bed.  I believe that Jesus is challenging us to understand a foundational truth about the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is God with us!

The relationship, which began between God and man in the Garden of Eden, has been restored through Christ death and resurrection and the pouring out of God’s Spirit upon those who believe.  

So this morning we need to realize that, when we are in Christ, God is with us.  Be encouraged by the words of God spoken through his prophet Isaiah, where he says, “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and steams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.”  44:3  

For us as believers we need to understand that we are in process with God’s Spirit.  The apostle Paul talks extensively in Romans 8 about how we are changed through God’s Spirit, but it does not happen instantly.  We need to be reminded of Philippians 1:6, “being confident of this that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”  We are a work in process!

However, we also need to take up the challenge to live in step with God’s Spirit.  We cannot wallow in our struggle with sin, just saying that it’s ok, I’m in process.  We also need be encouraged by Paul when he says in Philippians 3:13-14, “Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”  

As believers, it is our role to walk in step with God’s Spirit, through time spent in his word and through time spent with him in prayer, we become like that spring of water, welling up to eternal life.

Jesus is offering us living water, will you drink of it?