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In John chapter 4, we read the story of Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well. As Jesus graciously approaches her and they engage in conversation, He quickly refocuses her heart and mind and begins to speak to the longing of her soul—of a water that would quench her deepest thirst and need and which would become a well within her that would flow out to others. She asks for this water.
This encounter affords us the opportunity to examine some of the Bible’s object lessons about water that can teach us about what Jesus is offering us:
- Water composes the largest portion of our physical being and is required for life.
- Genesis 1 tells us that water covered the face of the deep and that the Spirit hovered over the water.
- We are made of water, and the life-animating energy, the breath of life, comes from God, the Spirit of God.
- Without water, we will die, and without the animating life energy, the Spirit of God, we will die.
- We must drink water regularly, or we will dehydrate and die.
- We do not have life in ourselves; we must stay connected to God and daily partake of Him, or we will decay and die. (This was also symbolically taught by the daily sacrifice in the Old Testament sacrificial system.)
- Water refreshes.
- The Holy Spirit brings life to our bodies, minds, and spirits and refreshes us (Romans 8:11).
- Water cleanses, washing away dirt.
- The Holy Spirit cleanses our hearts and minds from sin, fear, selfishness, guilt, and shame (Titus 3:5).
- Water cools a fever.
- The Holy Spirit cools our tempers, irritability, jealousies, and rage, changing our demeanor from pushing to get our own way to trusting Jesus with our lives and how things turn out (Galatians 5:22).
- Water puts out fire.
- The water of life, the cleansing presence of the Holy Spirit, increases our faith and extinguishes all the fiery darts of Satan, the fiery darts of fear, hurt, resentment, and various temptations (Ephesians 6:16).
- Water has three states: solid, liquid, and gas.
- God has three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (John 1:1–13; Luke 11:13).
- Water can be polluted.
- The life energy, spirit, breath of life, that God breathed into Adam was pure love, but Adam contaminated his life, his spirit, with fear and selfishness, and we are now all born into sin, conceived in iniquity (Psalm 51:5), born with spirits contaminated with fear and selfishness because this is the only life, the only spirit, with which Adam and Eve had to reproduce life (2 Timothy 1:7).
- Jesus came to purify the wellsprings of life by eradicating fear and selfishness and restoring in humanity the pure life of love and trust. And through Jesus, we can die to the old life of fear and selfishness and be reborn and receive the new life, the new spirit of love and trust, with its animating and motivating energy. This is the water of life offered to the woman and to you and me (Galatians 2:20).
- After the earth became polluted with sin, water was used to cleanse it—and at the end, the Spirit of God, His unveiled glory, will wash over the earth and cleanse it from all sin (Isaiah 33:14, 15; 2 Peter 3:6, 7).
- Water symbolizes the cleansing of hearts and minds in baptism—but the H2O doesn’t cleanse the soul from sin; it represents the Holy Spirit cleansing the heart and mind when we submit and surrender and are immersed in heart and mind into the cleansing power and presence of the Holy Spirit; i.e., experience baptism of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:13).
- Water coming from the rock in the desert represented the pure Spirit of God coming through and from Jesus to humanity, the Spirit that heals, purifies, recreates us in righteousness, and gives us eternal life (1 Corinthians 10:1–4).
- In Elijah’s day, it did not rain for 3.5 years. This was an object lesson for the lack of the Holy Spirit because God’s people had turned their hearts away from Him to Baal. Rain is symbolic of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon hearts and minds, which brings the harvest of spiritual fruit. And while we need the latter rain today more than ever, God will not pour out His Spirit to empower people to lie about Him, to bring forth fruit of a satanic character. What is needed for the final outpouring of the Holy Spirit is for people to embrace the truth about God as our Designer, our Creator, which is predicated upon rejecting the imposed-law lie and understanding that God’s laws are design laws. Then the Holy Spirit will be poured out to finish the work, empowering people to tell the truth about God, for the hour in human history has come for people to make a right judgment about God and return to worshiping Him as Creator and to stop presenting Him as a cosmic dictator and source of inflicted pain, suffering, and death (Revelation 14:7).
- When Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding, He gave a powerful and beautiful object lesson. The wedding is symbolic of Jesus uniting with His bride, the church, but only when the church is washed and purified.
“Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Ephesians 5:25–27 NIV84).
The water in the clay jars represents the purifying presence of the Holy Spirit, the cleansing power of God. The wine represents the sinless righteous life of Jesus. The clay jars represent human beings who are made out of the clay or the dirt of the earth. Turning water into wine inside the clay jars represents the water, the Spirit of God, working inside of us, convicting us of sin, and revealing the truth in love, which brings us to repentance. In repentance, we open our hearts and minds to God, and the cleansing water of the Holy Spirit removes our guilt, removes our shame, removes our fear and selfishness, and we receive the wine, which is symbolic of the blood, which is symbolic of the life of Christ. Thus, we experience a new life, with new motives, the life of Jesus; it is no longer our old selves that live but Christ lives in us (Galatians 2:20). We become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).
It is not enough to simply have the guilt and shame washed away; we must be reborn with a new life, a new spirit, which is the wine, the life of Christ animating and living within us.
The living water is the pure cleansing, vitalizing, animating presence of God, the eternal truth, love, and presence of God restored into humanity in and through Jesus Christ. He offers the same living water to us that He did to the woman at the well. Drink of the water of truth and love, and when you do, you will not only be cleansed from the guilt and shame of your past, but you will stop living a fear-based life, always seeking for self, and, instead, you will be reborn with the righteous life of Christ, a life of love and trust that will become a well of love and truth that will flow out of you to others.
Drink the living water! Drink deep and drink often!
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