THERE are many different ways in which souls are brought into contact with the Lord Jesus Christ. Some are made to feel the burden of their sins, and realizing the awfulness of their guilt they flee to Him for refuge from the wrath to come.
It is doubtless most important that a deep conscience-work should take place, and sooner or later the soul must be brought to a sense of its sinful condition.
But there are many who perhaps do not at first feel their guilt in any great degree, who nevertheless become the subjects of the Spirit’s work. They have been brought to experience the unsatisfying character of everything in this world, and they yearn for that which can fill their hearts with joy and peace and rest.
The woman at the well of Sychar was a case in point. She had drunk deeply at this world’s springs, but had failed to find that which satisfied her heart.
“There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water.”
To draw water! This might truly have been called the very occupation of her life. She was always drawing water, but could never draw enough. She was always coming, but had always to come again. What a picture of a heart ever craving, ever seeking, ever longing yet never satisfied, never contented, never at perfect rest! The world is full of such, and if only they could come where Jesus is their cravings would be satisfied, their needs would be met, and their hearts filled with joy and gladness.
“You hate the world and have left it,” wrote one not long since, “but I love it and adore it.”
Poor soul! doomed to bitter disappointment she is, though for a brief moment, like a butterfly she flutters her wings in the deceptive sunshine of its smile.
But a living Saviour sat on Sychar’s well, filled with a deeper longing than even that poor empty sinner. “Give Me to drink,” He says. The longing of His heart was to meet the deep need of hers.
Weary He was with His journey and thirsty too. But it was not for the water in the well that He longed; indeed, we do not read that the blessed Saviour had one drop of that. He yearned and thirsted to meet the need of this poor desolate heart― “Give Me to drink,” as though He said, “It is in your power to supply Me with that which can refresh My spirit in this weary world; just let Me win your heart’s affection, and fill it with heavenly joy, and this will be a refreshing draft of water to My spirit.” Blessed Saviour! Thou art still the same.
But the woman resists―
“How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.”
“How is it?” Is not this the language of unbelief? Needy, and in the very presence of the One who could meet her every need; yea, more than meet it for time and eternity. What multitudes there are in this poor world of woe and disappointment who speak and feel just like this! “How is it?” they ask, they cannot think it possible that any should be truly satisfied.
Oh, if they only knew!
“Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give Me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.”
The gift of God! yes, this is the character of God revealed in Christ―He is a giving God.
Under the law at Sinai, He was an exacting God―a God that demanded righteousness from man. But man had no righteousness to give, he was a sinner, cursed by the law. Now, in Christ God reveals Himself as a giving God, not one whit less righteous than He was, but One who comes to give all that the sinner needs of life, of righteousness, of joy, and peace; yes, the gift of God. And God was there in the person of His own Son, for Jesus was God, and He had come into the midst of a world of sinners, so close to them that He sat there on the well side, and spoke to this poor sinner’s heart, and spoke to her face to face. “If thou knewest... who it is that saith to thee, Give Me to drink.”
The same God that once spoke amidst the thunders of Sinai is here speaking in the soft and tender accents of love.
He does not charge home upon her conscience all the guilt that He knew was there; not one word of reproof. The Pharisees might have had much to say in condemnation of her life, and Jesus knew better than they the full extent of her sins, and all that they were in the sight of a holy God. But He does not raise a question as to them; this conscience-work will come in its due time, and must. But here it is the winning of a heart dissatisfied with the world, and seeking for joy and happiness, yet seeking them in vain.
Living water. ― “Thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water,” Living water! what is this? Ah, these are waters that never lose their refreshing power―water from springs that never run dry.
“The woman saith unto Him, Sir, Thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast Thou that living water?”
She cannot understand Him, her thoughts still linger round that well; she cannot rise above the idea of earthly happiness. Heavenly springs and divine joy she does not think of. From whence? is now her question. She might have said, I have tried the world in all its forms, and all is vanity and vexation of spirit; all its joys are like the iridescent soap bubble that bursts in one’s hands just at the time one thinks to possess and enjoy―from whence hast Thou that living water?
“Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”
Thirst again! ― And is not this true of every spring of earthly happiness? We do not say that there is no pleasure to be found in the paths of sin. We read in the Scripture of “the pleasures of sin,” but they are only “for a season.” But we do not only speak of the grosser forms of sin.
Multitudes there are who plunge into depths of shameful lusts and unlawful desires. Do they find satisfaction therein? Pleasure for a moment there may be, and then the remorse that ofttimes leads to self-destruction.
But we do not now speak of such. Are there not tens of thousands today weary with the world, disappointed with life, and utterly miserable, who yet began with ardent desire for happiness.? With light and unsuspecting hearts they glided along the streams of earthly pleasure; the world, already weary and sick of its own woe and disappointment, opened its arms of deceitful and selfish welcome to them, as it had done to millions before. Soon they found themselves swept into its vortex, to learn in their turn the utter emptiness and misery of it all.
We have met and conversed with many who have freely admitted the truth of all this. They know that the world and its pleasures do not satisfy, that they never have and never can. But what can they do? They know nothing better, and think they must try like the rest, and is there not always just the chance that they may be more fortunate than the multitudes that have gone before?
But oh, what words of unearthly sweetness now fall upon the ears of this poor, sad, and disappointed sinner!
“Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.”
(To be concluded.)