Reformed Church Box Hill

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8 August 2021

A Fountain of Life for Thirsty Souls.

Water is life. Don’t believe me?  Try going without it!  Without water, our bodies will die in about three days.  Without water, grass and plants will wither, and the world will die.  We need water – water is life!  It should come as no surprise, then, that water was a key feature in Eden where life began: “A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden…” (Gen 2:10).  Furthermore, it should come as no surprise that God uses water imagery as a symbolic metaphor for the constant spiritual life that we need from him.

In Psalm 42:1-2 we read: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.  When shall I come and appear before God?”  The godly man of Psalm 1 is said to be like a tree “planted by streams of water” (Ps 1:3).  In Proverbs 25:25 we read: “Like cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country”, and in Isaiah 12 we have a picture of salvation being one of drawing water from a well: “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the LORD GOD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation” (Is 12:2-3).

One of the most potent and clear passages addressing the relationship between eternal life and water is in John’s Gospel, chapter four.  As Jesus sat by Jacob’s Well, weary from his journey, a woman from Samaria came to draw water.  Jesus then asked her to give him a drink – which was surprising to her, for even the fact of talking to her breached expected social norms.  But Jesus’ request was far more than a request to relieve his own bodily thirst, it was an opportunity for him to meet her spiritual thirst.  As she questions why he is even talking to her, here is the dialogue that follows:

“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would asked him, and he would have given you living water.”  The woman said to him, “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.”  Jesus said to her, “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” (John 4:10-14).

When God made Adam, he breathed into him “the breath of life” (Gen 2:7).  Yet man sinned, and the day that he ate of the forbidden fruit, he died (Gen 2:17).  We are used to thinking about death in terms of physical death, but this is far too limited an idea to truly capture what death actually is.  Death is not a state of non-existence, it is to be in a state of being cut off from life.  Life, properly understood, is to know God, and to receive from him the life that he has in himself. “This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3).  True life is all about existing in a relationship with God, knowing who he is, and receiving that life from him through our connection to him.

When Adam sinned, he lost this condition.  He no longer “knew” God.  He was in a state of death.  He was spiritually dead (Eph 2:1), and his body too began the process of being unmade and returned to the dust out of which it was formed.  In John 4, Jesus uses the imagery of physical water to illustrate the principal of spiritual life.  Just as we thirst after water physically, so too we must thirst after Christ spiritually.  Through Christ, God has opened up a “fountain”, and those who drink of this fount will find that spiritual life once again flows into their being. 

In John 11:25, Jesus said to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”  Christ is our life (Col 3:4), given to us as a free gift from God (Rom 6:23), and so as we believe in him we, “who were dead in our trespasses… God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses” (Col 2:13).

And so our need for life is clear.  Without Christ, we are dead in our trespasses and sins.  If we would escape eternal damnation and judgment, if we would live, we must come to Christ.  And having come to Christ, we must cling to Christ.  Jesus said: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:4-5).

So… where are you standing as you read these words?  Have you come to Christ?  Are you straying from Christ?  Are you abiding in Christ?  Without water, our bodies will expire within about three days.  Without Christ, our souls too will expire.  A day of neglecting time with the Saviour is a day when your soul has begun to wither and dry out.  There will be no fruit, and there will be no life.  So often we go to other things for satisfaction and fulfillment, but without Christ they are all “broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer 2:13).  The fountain of life metaphor is poetic imagery, and the reality to which it points is the living water of the Word of God.  Put simply, God’s words must abide in us.  They must occupy our thoughts.  They must gain and hold our attention.  Our souls must be saturated in the Word of God, without it – we will have no life.  “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Dt 8:3).  So come!  Come, drink freely!  Drink daily!  Drink of Christ!  Drink today.

Soli Deo Gloria!

     Q.  What is the aseity of God?

          A.  God’s aseity is the eternal condition of self-existent life that he possesses in and of himself.

 

     Q.  How does God’s aseity cause us to thirst after and drink of him as the fountain of life?

          A.  Seeing as how we are all withered branches in our sin, being dry and unfruitful, we must come to Christ for life, lest we be gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. Furthermore, we must continually abide in Christ, who is our life, and his words must abide in us, for without him we can do nothing and can have no life or fruitfulness in and of ourselves.