Living Water and Hidden Food
John 4:10-34
The rule of threes. Do you know about this? If you were a survival expert, you would. The rule of threes says you can go about three weeks without food, three days without water, three hours without shelter, and three minutes without air. Let me repeat that, three weeks without food, three days without water, three hours without shelter, and three minutes without air.
So food, water, shelter, and air are important. Without them you will die. Today we will look at two of them, water and food.
John chapter 4 tells the story of the woman at the well. We will not read all the verses in this chapter because it is a longer story and I am sure most of you know it. We will however look at the parts of the story where Jesus talks about water and food, more specifically, living water and hidden food. Do you know about these? Do you know what they are? I have titled this sermon just that, living water and hidden food.
In this passage Jesus was at a well in Samaria. His students had gone off to buy food in the city. A Samaritan woman came to get water from the well and Jesus asked her for a drink. The woman replied, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can You ask me for a drink?” Our first point comes from Jesus’ answer.
1. If Only You Knew God's Gift
John 4:10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
“If you knew the gift of God,” this is what Jesus said to the woman. “If you knew the gift of God.” God has a gift. Many people don’t know about this gift. There is a treasure for them and they don’t know it. They haven’t found it.
Have you heard of the book entitled “The Secret”? It has twelve pictures and twelve riddles that tell the location of twelve treasure boxes buried in the United States. The book was first published in 1982. Only three of the twelve boxes have been found. The author was killed in a car accident so the one person who knows the actual locations is dead. The pictures and riddles are not easy to solve. Many people have tried. There is even a website that helps. It compiles many of the guesses that people have made about the clues and lists all of the cities where they think the treasure boxes are. Wichita is not one of them. But they could be wrong.
What is the treasure? A plexi-glass box with a ceramic casque in it. Inside the casque is a key that can be exchanged for a jewel worth around a thousand dollars. That's it. All you have to do is find one of them. The relatives of the author will still give out a jewel to anyone who finds a box.
God has a much greater treasure. If only people knew the gift of God. They don't have to search for it. They don't have to figure out any riddles. It is much more valuable than a jewel. And it is free. Just ask for it. Most of us have received this gift from God.
I think that it is more than just salvation. It includes it, but there is more to God’s gift. God’s gift includes all of the things that God wants to give us for free. He has actually already given us these things. We have them.
Is it not true that we have no idea of the value of this gift? We don't think about. If only we knew the gift of God. God has a very valuable gift for you. If only you knew it.
But the gift is not the only thing that Jesus mentioned.
2. If Only You Knew Who Jesus Is
Verse 10 says, “If you knew the gift of God AND who it is that asks you for a drink.” If only you knew who it is that asks you for a drink. We know everything about Jesus, don't we? Or do we? If only we knew who Jesus really is.
Take the most popular person in the world. Take the most valuable person in the world. Take the best person in the world. Take the nicest person in the world. Take the smartest person in the world. Roll all of these into one person. That doesn't even come close to who Jesus is. If only we knew who Jesus is. Maybe we should spend some time thinking about that, who Jesus really is.
The gift of God and who Jesus is, these set the stage for what God wants to do for us. If only we knew.
This woman, if she knew these things, she would have done something. That’s what Jesus said. She would have asked for something. That brings us to our third point.
3. There's Living Water in Them Thar People
When it comes to water, we are spoiled. If we need water, we turn a knob and out comes water. If we don't want water from the faucet, we go to the store and buy water in bottles. Just twist off the cap and drink. In other parts of the world and at other times in history, getting water has not been so easy.
While I was in Russia, I stayed for a few nights in a distant village. It was the summer cottage of a young man in our church. To get there, we traveled on a train for an hour, then got off at a platform in the middle of nowhere. Then we walked for half an hour. It was like stepping back in time a hundred years. There was no running water there. Every morning we took two buckets and walked to the local well. It was in a little shack. It had recently been redug. There was a shiny galvanized pipe about two feet in diameter sticking out of the ground. It had sand around it. It went down about thirty or forty feet. There was a bucket on a rope. You feed it down into the well, wait for the bucket to fill up, pull it up, dump it into one of your buckets, and repeat until your buckets are full. Then you have to carry the heavy buckets home being careful not to spill any. That was our water for the day.
Water was hard to get, but it was a necessity. We couldn't live without it.
This Samaritan woman was doing just this, getting water from a well. The story continues.
John 4:13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,
John 4:14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Living water. What is that? Is this true? Do you have a spring of water welling up inside of you? Is it true that you are not thirsty anymore? If you have this spring in you, you shouldn’t be. Jesus never explains this. This is all we know about it. What is this living water? Later in chapter 7, John says that the living water is the Holy Spirit. I think that here it involves more than that.
We have to go back to the gift of God. The gift of God is a gift that keeps giving and giving and giving. It is like living water. What does God give us?
Yes, He gave us salvation. Yes, He gives us the Holy Spirit and many of these things come through Him. But He also gives us love. He gives us forgiveness. He gives us help. He gives us advice and instruction. He gives us encouragement. He gives us the right way. He gives us kindness. He gives us peace. He gives us life. We could go on and on with this.
These things become a spring of water welling up inside of us. They are always there. We don't have to go looking for a well, they are here, inside of us. They keep coming and coming. Have we become complacent with the spring of living water inside of us? Do we even see it anymore?
The other night I was walking in our neighborhood. I saw water flowing down the street. I followed the water to a driveway on a side street and a fenced-in back yard, fenced in with a privacy fence. The water was flowing out under the fence into the driveway and down the street. I could hear the babbling of water. I could see yard-lights on in the fenced-in backyard. But no voices. No people. I went around to the front of the house and it was all dark. The water was running in the backyard, the backyard was all lit up, but the people were asleep in the house. They didn't know about the water.
Isn’t that the same with us? We are all Christians. We have the living water inside of us bubbling up and running down the street. But aren’t we asleep? We don't see the water anymore. We don’t hear it. We don’t feel it. We are looking at other things. We are too busy to drink the water. We may even be thirsty. The water is there. Put your hand in the living water of God's love. Drink it. See God's forgiveness flowing out. Have some.
Don’t you see all the things that God has given us an endless supply of? It is time we started drinking the living water bubbling out of us. Our prayer time is a good time for us to look at this, to drink this water.
That is water. Water is good. But you can't live on water alone. You also need food.
4. God Has Food For You
We have to skip down to verse 31 to find the food. It is after His students have come back with food. The woman has run into the village and more people are coming to see Jesus.
John 4:31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
John 4:32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
John 4:33 Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
John 4:34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
Jesus had a secret stash of food that He had not told His disciples about. It was hidden food. He said, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
God has the same food for us. What is it? What did Jesus say? “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work.”
There are two things here. Number one, doing what God wants us to do. There are things that God wants us to do. Some are things that every Christian should do, like: read the Bible; pray; go to church; do what is right; go the extra mile. We should be doing these. There are also specific things that God wants you to do, just you. Doing these things is food for you, food for your soul, food for your spirit.
Do you remember a time when you did something to serve God? Maybe you prayed in church. Maybe you helped in VBS. Maybe you prepared a Simple Supper. Didn’t it make you feel good? Didn’t it feed you?
The other part of this food, the second thing, is finishing God's work. God has certain tasks that He wants done. He will prepare you for a task. You may not know what that task is. You have to trust God. Much of my life has been me training for tasks that I didn't know about. I didn’t know why I was doing the training, but I was. Eventually God did give me those tasks and I was prepared for them. When God gives you a task, finish it. This is food from God, doing what God wants you to do and finishing His work.
What job does God want you to do? What job? I am here to help you with it. This church is here to help you with it.
You can drink from the living water welling up inside of you and be happy with it the rest of your life. That’s good. But you still need food. You need to do what God wants. You need to finish God's work.
Do you know the gift of God? Do you see all the things that God has given you? Do you know who Jesus is? Do you see how wonderful He is? Are you drinking in these things? Are you drinking of the living water welling up in your soul? Are you eating God's food? Are you doing what God wants you to do and finishing it? I hope so. If you are, the living water and the hidden food will change your life.
Back to the rule of threes. Do you remember it? Three weeks without food, three days without water, three hours without shelter, and three minutes without air. This is a good thing for you to know just in case you find yourself in an episode of “Alone” or “Naked and Afraid”, or stranded in a snow storm. But really, that most likely will never happen.
We have plenty of water and plenty of food.
God has also provided us with plenty of spiritual water and plenty of spiritual food.
Whether you see it or not, We as Christians have water overflowing inside of us. Drink. Drink it. There is no need to be thirsty. Drink.
There is also an enormous cache of food that God has stocked up for us. Eat it. There is no reason to go hungry. Eat.
Drink in the gift of God. Eat by doing what God wants you to do. Food and water will refresh you. It will strengthen you. It will make you grow.
Living water and hidden food. Come eat and drink.
