Flowing Water

John 4:13-14, 28-30, 39

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Our reading today comes from various verses in John chapter four, and Jesus is here speaking with the woman at the well, and he’s talking to her about himself as the water of life, meaning that he’s come to be our Savior, to give us the forgiveness of our sins, and that by faith in him we can go to heaven. So he uses the imagery of himself as the water of life, and he’s meeting with her at a well. He says

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I will give him will never be thirsty ever again. Rather, the water I will give him will become in him a spring of water, bubbling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14)

Well, then later on we hear this from about the woman

Then the woman left her water jar and went back into town. She said to the people, “Come, see the man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” They left the town and came to him. Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony. (John 4:28-30, 39)

When water flows, it naturally wants to go downstream and find the lowest spot. And that’s kind of a beautiful picture of the Gospel. In this story Jesus talks to this woman about some of the sins in her life, and his goal is to get her to repent of her sins and then bring her the refreshing knowledge of his grace and his forgiveness. And in that same way, God’s Word and the Gospel about Christ tries to find even the lowest spot in us and in our lives and cause us to repent so that it can come and then refresh us with that beautiful, wonderful truth that our sins are forgiven for Jesus sake.

Water is also a very powerful thing. If water flows over a rock for a long period of time, it can start to wear down the rock. It can even start to form a pool in the rock. And almost like a cup or a bowl will start to get established if the water is flowing through it in just the right way. And that’s also how it is with God’s grace. And Jesus is our water of life. It creates in us a reservoir, a bowl or a pool that not only gathers and collects that beautiful forgiveness for ourselves, but it also wants to then be a reservoir for others. And you can see that with this woman.

Notice something about this woman. Jesus doesn’t tell her to go and tell people about him. She just does it automatically. She goes and says, Come and see this man. She wasn’t forced into doing that. Jesus didn’t instruct her to do it or direct her to do it. The gospel creates its own evangelism. It creates a love for other people’s souls. And the same wonderful truth that she now knows about her Savior, she automatically wants other people to know about that. And you can see this in a lot of stories in the Bible. The shepherds at Jesus’ birth, they weren’t commanded to go and make known abroad about Jesus, but they did. The jailer at Philippi. He took Paul and Barnabas immediately to his family so that they could learn about Jesus as their Savior. And the same is true here with this woman.

She suddenly runs into town and she doesn’t have to be dragged into doing this or forced into doing this. But she joyfully now goes and invites people to come and hear this same wonderful truth about how to get to heaven through faith in Christ. There’s a natural link in the Gospel between our hearts and our mouths. Whenever we come to faith in Christ, there’s a natural desire in us to want to confess and talk to others and somehow communicate to others the wonderful things that we know about the Savior. And it can happen in a variety of ways. It could be just in text messages that we send to friends. It could be in little things that we write to them or just casual conversations that we have. Maybe sitting with a friend over coffee. There might be a variety of different ways that we support and communicate the Gospel in our lives. Amen.