FROM THE PASTOR
February 12, 2017
I was reminiscing with someone last Wednesday prior to Bible Study that the first elementary school I attended in Rives Junction had an artesian well on site. To this day I can remember how refreshing it was to take a long drink of that water. No matter the season it never stopped flowing and never stopped satisfying. Yet, even though we drank from it often over the years I lived in Rives and as satisfying as it was, eventually we needed another drink.
Jesus, on His way to Galilee from Judea, passed through Samaria. It was in Samaria that He met a woman at a well. She didn’t realize it but He had made that journey into Samaria just to keep an appointment with her. Her life was about to change. Several interesting things took place at the edge of that well that day. 1st a Jew interacted with a Samarian, 2nd a Jewish man spoke to a Samarian woman, 3rd the Samarian woman heard private things from a stranger she thought were private, 4th she received an invitation she didn’t understand and couldn’t refuse.
The meeting was not happenstance, and neither was the location. The well was none other than Jacob’s well on a parcel given by Jacob to his son Joseph. It was also near the burial place of Joseph when Israel finally returned from Egypt. The well is still there today. It’s a deep well approximately 100 feet deep and taps into a free-flowing spring. Both Jesus and the Samarian woman were familiar with it and its satisfying product. To that end Jesus asked her, “Give Me a drink.”
After her surprise that a Jew would converse with her Jesus reversed the question and made an unusual proclamation, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water." 13 "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life."
As a kid in Rives I would visit the well frequently because my thirst came frequently. The satisfaction was only temporal. That’s the way it is with those trying to satisfy themselves by other means than the true spring of life. I am so thankful that there was a point in my life where I understood that my spiritual thirst could be completely satisfied if I accepted Christ, the Son of God, as my Savior.
Let me repeat what Jesus said "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water." It’s His free gift and it satisfies.
Thank You for your faithfulness! Pastor Larry
