Our Eternal Thirst

• Come and drink the water of life.

What are your greatest longings and deepest yearnings?

In early August, when 400,000 residents in greater Toledo, Ohio’s fourth largest city, were ordered not to drink their water due to contamination, the governor of Ohio told the public, “What’s more important than water? Water’s about life. We know it’s difficult. We know it’s frustrating.” Actually, water is even more crucial to key teachings of the Gospel and spiritual life itself:

      1. Water shows: What is God like?

      2. Water shows: Who is Jesus Christ?

      3. Water shows: What must I do now?

      4. Water shows: How should I live my life?

Today we explore this third essential.

• Water reveals the way to quench our eternal thirst (John 7:37-39).

As John the Apostle unfolds his Gospel about the Word become flesh, he recalls events, conversations, and speeches from the life of Jesus which reveal the fact that spiritual thirst is part and parcel of human nature. Do you have longings? Do you have yearnings? Do you have hungers? Do you have desires pining away in the very depths of your being? You are not alone.

Encountering real-life examples of spiritual thirst

Thirst for ultimate truth and a spiritual center. In John chapter 1, the calling of the first disciples shows the deep human thirst to find the truth around which we can wrap our lives. Andrew, one of the two first disciples, hung around Jesus, came to a determination, then looked up his brother, Simon Peter, and announced his conclusion, “ ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which means Christ)” (1:41). Philip, the next disciple did an assessment and then eagerly told his brother Nathanael, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” (1:45). Skeptical, Nathanael investigated and announced his own conclusion personally to Jesus, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (1:49). Through empirical evidence gathered by seeing, hearing, and touch; and through thinking, reasoning, and emotional intelligence, — these first disciples discovered a unique individual: someone who is both fully human and fully God.

If we use the inner self or else something deep within ourselves (god, a life force, a spark of divinity, an impulse of evolution) as the center for our lives, we will ultimately not find a center. We will continue to be thirsty and unsatisfied. Our lives will be erratic and perhaps even eccentric. For many years A. N. Wilson was a leading European atheist. He wrote not only history and novels but also regular attacks on Christianity. But then, in his 50s, he began to realize that all the things that mattered to him most — art, music, culture, meaning and morality, truth and justice — were all groundless, foundation-less, on his atheism. In a brave move, he began a search, followed it wherever it would lead, and became a Christian. In a British weekly he wrote:

[When I had dinner in Washington, DC with Christopher Hitchens,] Hitchens was excited to greet a new convert to his non-creed and put me through a catechism before uncorking some stupendous claret. “So – absolutely no God?” “Nope,” I was able to say with Moonie-zeal. “No future life, nothing ‘out there’?” “No,” I obediently replied. At last! I could join in the creed shared by so many (most?) of my intelligent contemporaries in the western world – that men and women are purely material beings (whatever that is supposed to mean), that “this is all there is” (ditto), that God, Jesus and religion are a load of baloney . . . [1]

But then he began to see things differently.

How could it have come about that groups of anthropoid apes developed the amazing morphological complexity of a single sentence, let alone the whole grammatical mystery which has engaged Chomsky and others in our lifetime and linguists for time out of mind? No, the existence of language is one of the many phenomena – of which love and music are the two strongest – which suggest that human beings are very much more than collections of meat. They convince me that we are spiritual beings, and that the religion of the incarnation, asserting that God made humanity in His image, and continually restores humanity in His image, is simply true. As a working blueprint for life, as a template against which to measure experience, it fits. [2]

Thirst for meaning and purpose. In John chapter 2, the wedding at Cana in Galilee shows – in an off-handed way – the deep human thirst to find meaning in life. Ordinary people were enjoying some of the simple pleasures that make ordinary, mundane life worthwhile: conjugal love and celebrating with others. Jesus, his mother and his disciples had been invited. A problem was about to create an abrupt, unhappy ending to the festivities. His mother ran to Jesus and said, “The wine’s run out. Quick, do something.” Immediately she turned to the servants and said, “Whatever he says, do it.”

Jesus quietly ordered that the six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification (each with a capacity of twenty or thirty gallons) be filled with water. Then he said to the servants, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” In this first miraculous sign which Jesus performed to meet human need and to display his deity and Messiahship, the water had changed to wine – and it was of the highest quality, “the good stuff.” In life we have a longing for meaning and purpose: simple pleasures, personal relationships, and moments of happiness. Can we live by Richard Dawkins’ atheistic worldview of “no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference”[3]? In the same article A.N. Wilson also wrote:

When I think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love. It is not that (as they believe) they have rumbled the tremendous fraud of religion – prophets do that in every generation. Rather, these unbelievers are simply missing out on something that is not difficult to grasp. Perhaps it is too obvious to understand; obvious, as lovers feel it was obvious that they should have come together, or obvious as the final resolution of a fugue. [4]

Thirst for an ethical life and a worthwhile destiny. In John chapter 3, the night visit of Nicodemus shows the deep human thirst to find an intellectually and emotionally satisfying answer to the quest for an ethical life and a worthwhile destiny. To understand the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus, there are several things to keep in mind about Nicodemus. (1) Nicodemus was a teacher of the Old Testament [the Hebrew Scriptures] and well-versed in it (John 3:10). A religious discussion would recall to his mind passages of Scripture. (2) He was a member of the ruling national Council (the Sanhedrin), which handled judicial, religious, and administrative matters for the Jews. He was someone who thought through issues. (3) He was a fair-minded man. Later on, when the chief priests and Pharisees (i.e., the Council) desired to Jesus arrested and wanted to condemn him without first-hand knowledge, Nicodemus spoke up, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” The majority silenced him with a put-down, “Are you from Galilee too?” (John 7:51-52).

(4) He was a Pharisee. The Pharisees believed in a future resurrection of all peoples and in the existence of angels and spirits (Acts 23:8). They were religiously zealous and worked to be numbered among the righteous at the resurrection of the dead (Phil 3:5-6). They had a great interest in ceremonial cleansing and washing with water (Mark 7:3-4). They held positions of religious authority, were very concerned about their own public recognition and personal honor, and were very scrupulous about keeping both the Law of Moses and the tradition of the elders [later called the oral law] (Matt 23). They refused to participate in John the Baptist’s baptism of repentance from sin in preparation for the coming of the Lord (Luke 7:29-30). Although, in any group, people can act as individuals, this is Jesus’ description of a typical Pharisee (Luke 18:10-12):

Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.”

Now let’s listen in on the conversation in John chapter 3. Nicodemus has chosen to have a quiet, personal meeting with Jesus at night and begins, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs [miracles] that you do unless God is with him.” The ensuing discussion has a point of agreement between Nicodemus the Pharisee and Jesus: the kingdom of God. Although God rules now, there is a coming resurrection and judgment in which the righteous will enter the kingdom (ruler-ship) of God, which will be like a great banquet – life at its fullness in the presence of God. A wonderful future destiny for me and my fellow humans is one of the great thirsts of life. Nicodemus had such a thirst.

But how shall we obtain such a wonderful future called “the kingdom of God”? As a Pharisee, Nicodemus thought he had the answer: accept the God of Israel and circumcision. And live your life zealously according to the rules of the Law of Moses as well as by all the traditions handed down from the elders, including ceremonial washing with water. The crowds might be way off the mark. Certain occupations like tax collecting may lead one to a lifestyle that dishonors God. But, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or like Jewish tax collectors working for the Romans. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.”

Nicodemus had a rude awakening. Jesus announced, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” By the idea that “you must be born again,” Jesus sweeps away all of Nicodemus’ scrupulous striving for the perfect keeping of law and ceremony and, instead, Jesus demands that Nicodemus first be re-made by the power of God. He who was too good to take part in John’s baptism of repentance from sin now finds himself against an impenetrable barrier. You can never make yourself good enough. God must re-make you.

Nicodemus countered, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Jesus explained, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

As a long-time teacher of Scripture, Nicodemus knew well the Old Testament passages about water and the Spirit:

For I will pour water on the thirsty land,

and streams on the dry ground;

I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring,

and my blessing on your descendants. (Isa 44:3)

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. (Ezek 36:25-28)

“Born again” – re-made by the power of God – means being “born of water and the Spirit.” Being “born of water and the Spirit,” according to Ezekiel 36, keeps the goal of having an ethical life – walking in the ways and laws of the Lord.  But this worthy goal requires following the divinely prescribed order. God must act first. God must cleanse us with spiritual water. God must renew us by giving us his Spirit. Then and only then will we be his people and he will be our God.

How can one participate in this water and the Spirit? After other give and take in this conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus concludes, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15). It is clear from John 12:23, 32, that the lifting up of Jesus Christ means his lifting up onto the cross, his crucifixion, his death as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Again, this crucifixion as the Lamb of God for sin is something that Nicodemus cannot do. Only Jesus Christ, the Son of Man and the Son of God, can do it. Likewise, you and I cannot do it either. Only Jesus can do it.

What can Nicodemus do? What can we do? It is left for us to believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. And, after being cleansed with spiritual water from God and being given the Spirit of the living God to live in us, the we can and then we will (by God’s kindness and mercy) live that ethical life for him and through him. The cleansing is from God through Christ. The Holy Spirit is from God through Christ. The power of an ethical life is from God through Christ.

Do you have a thirst for ethical living and an eternal destiny that could be described as a great banquet? Here is A.N. Wilson again:

I haven’t mentioned morality, but one thing that finally put the tin hat on any aspirations to be an unbeliever was writing a book about the Wagner family and Nazi Germany, and realising how utterly incoherent were Hitler’s neo-Darwinian ravings, and how potent was the opposition, much of it from Christians; paid for, not with clear intellectual victory, but in blood. Read Pastor Bonhoeffer’s book Ethics, and ask yourself what sort of mad world is created by those who think that ethics are a purely human construct. Think of Bonhoeffer’s serenity before he was hanged, even though he was in love and had everything to look forward to. [5]

Thirst for inner freedom and change. In John chapter 4, the encounter with the woman at the well shows the deep human thirst to be able to face our past misdeeds and to change for the better.

The sun was beating down at high noon as Jesus, weary from his trip from Jerusalem (province of Judea), sat down at Jacob’s well in the town of Sychar (province of Samaria). Soon, back in Jerusalem, he – a Jew – would be lambasted by being called a Samaritan and demon-possessed (John 8:48). That’s because the typical Jew regarded Samaritans as mixed blood compromisers of Jewish monotheism, who had changed the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) to say that true worshippers should worship the true God on Mount Gerizim, located in Samaria, rather than in Jerusalem.

It was a common Jewish belief that Samaritans were ritually unclean and that using common eating and drinking implements would transfer the ritual uncleanness to somebody who is clean and thereby render him unclean. The disciples, having learned from Jesus that impurity is moral impurity and arises from the human heart – the personality center with its mind, emotions, will and conscience – went to buy food from the Samaritan town of Sychar, leaving Jesus alone at the well.

A woman, all alone with a water jar, approached the well. An interesting conversation ensued between the woman (W) and Jesus (J). Every statement below is a direct quote from John 4.

J:    “Give me a drink.”

W:             “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?”

J:    “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.”

W:             “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”

J:    “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 again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

W:             “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

J:    “Go, call your husband, and come here.”

W:             “I have no husband.”

J:    “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

W:             “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”

J:    “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

W: “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.”

J:    “I who speak to you am he.”

Just then the disciples came back with food and the conversation abruptly ended. In her excitement over discovering that the promised Messiah had come, the woman left her water jar and dashed off to town. She told the people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” People starting coming out to meet Jesus and he stayed in town for two days. Afterwards they told the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”

The Samaritans were a religious people and believed the promise of Holy Scripture that God would raise up another prophet like Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15) and that this prophet is the Chosen One, the Messiah, the Savior of the world. The woman – burdened with having gone in and out of so many marriages and now living with a man with whom she was not married – was confronted at Jacob’s well by a person who forced her to face her burdensome past. Perhaps she had shame and guilt, and that was why she picked the time of day to go and get water when hardly anyone else would be there. We don’t know. But we know that somehow she realized that this man also had the solution to meet her need for inner freedom and change. He had spiritual water that would quench her spiritual thirst, give her eternal life, and enable her to worship God in spirit and in truth, not only in Jerusalem and in Mt. Gerizim but everywhere followers of Jesus Christ gather.

In late December 2008 column for The Times of London, Matthew Parris visited Malawi, came back to London, and wrote a column, “As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God”:

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it’s Malawi . . .

Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good….

Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing….

[As a child living in rural African villages and cities, I saw Africans before and after conversion to Christ.] The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world – a directness in their dealings with others – that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall….

[The Christians had] honesty, diligence and optimism in their work. . . . Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man’s place in the Universe that Christianity had taught. [6]

Finding the living water that will quench spiritual thirst

In John chapter 9, Jesus went to Jerusalem to attend the Feast of Tabernacles (or Booths, Hebrew sukkot), one of three festivals which Jewish men were commanded by the Torah to travel to Jerusalem and keep. In Jerusalem the last day of the feast was the seventh day. In the Jewish Diaspora the last day was the eighth day. The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906 gives traditional background about this festival:

The libation of water (Suk. iv. 1, 42b) was a ceremony to which grave importance was attached…. God is made to say (R. H. 16a), “Pour out water before Me on the festival in order that your rains for the year may be blest.” A prayer for rain is recited on the eighth day (Ta'an. i. 1, 2; Ber. v. 2). The practise is assigned an ancient origin in the Talmud (see Yer. Suk. iv., beginning; Suk. 34a, 54b); it is said to be referred to in Isa. xii. 3 (Suk. 48b, 51a) . . . [7]

At the last day of the festival a priest has poured out water, which is associated with Isaiah 12:3, “With joy you (plural) will draw water from the wells of salvation.” Also on the last day, priests read to the people from Zechariah 14 and Ezekiel 47, which talk of rivers of living water flowing forth from the Temple in the end time [8]. With such thoughts in people’s minds, the Gospel tells us (John 7:37-39):

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart [literally, “belly”] will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

It is a bit ambiguous as to whether “belly” refers to the believer or to Jesus. Because of the apostolic comment about the Spirit being given through Jesus, it is preferable to see “belly” as referring to Jesus. So the passage pictures people who have come to the Feast of Tabernacles as those who thinking about spiritual thirst. And Jesus identifies himself as the one who can forever satisfy that thirst with rivers of living river (symbolic of the Holy Spirit) flowing from him. The Holy Spirit, as we’ve seen from John chapter 3, is the one who comes with cleansing from the pollution of sin and comes with power over sin to enable us to live pure and truthful and loving lives.

A half century ago a teenager was spiritually parched and in desperate need of the water of life. The Christian Standard tells his story:

About 50 years ago in India, a Christian named Fred David visited a forlorn 17-year-old in the hospital. The young man David visited was hospitalized because he had tried to end his own life by drinking poison.

Fortunately, the attempted suicide failed and the teenager was going to recover. Fred handed a Bible to the patient’s mom, showing her the page containing John 14:19, where Jesus says, “Because I live, you also will live.”

The young man in the hospital bed was Ravi Zacharias.

No one there that day—least of all Ravi himself—knew he would grow up to become, in the words of Charles Colson, “the great apologist of our time.” Zacharias credits Fred David with leading him to Christ and urging him to preach the gospel. Loving actions, not just logical arguments, changed his life. [9]

Do you spiritually thirst? Come and drink the water of life from Jesus Christ. Believe in him and you will find your thirsts satisfied: the thirst for ultimate truth and a spiritual center, the thirst for meaning and purpose, the thirst for an ethical life and a worthwhile destiny, the thirst for inner freedom and change, and the thirst for eternal life.

[1] A. N. Wilson, “Why I Believe Again,” New Statesman, April 2, 2009. http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2009/04/conversion-experience-atheism

[2] Ibid.

[3] Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden (New York: Basic Books, 1995), p 133.

[4] Wilson, op. cit.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Matthew Parris, “As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God,” The Times [of London], December 27, 2008. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/matthewparris/article2044345.ece

[7] “Tabernacles, Feast of,” Isidore Singer (ed.), Jewish Encyclopedia (12 volumes; New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901-1906). http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14185-tabernacles-feast-of#anchor9

[8] Craig S. Keener, “Rivers of living water in John 7:37-38,” Bible Background; Research and Commentary by Dr. Craig Keener, August 22, 2011. http://www.craigkeener.com/rivers-of-living-water-in-john-737-38/

[9] David Faust, “A Day with Ravi Zacharias,” Christian Standard 6/14/14.

http://christianstandard.com/2014/06/a-day-with-ravi-zacharias/. Faust says: “Zacharias recounts the story about Fred David’s hospital visit in his autobiography, Walking from East to West (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), and in a first-person article “Antidote to Poison” in Christianity Today, April 26, 2013.