May 5 (Tuesday) -- Living Water

How to find a wife, Old Testament style: Judges 21:1-Ruth 1:22

The water Jesus gives is living water: John 4:4-42

Remember the wonders the Lord has done: Psalm 105:1-15

A truthful witness saves lives: Proverbs 14:25


Whew! We end the book of Judges with the abduction of wives for the Benjaminites and begin the book of Ruth with her humble time of being a widow Moabitess. Remember the talking donkey in Numbers 22? Moab was the nation King Balak ruled over. Balak is the king who tried to get the prophet Balaam to curse the Israelites. Ruth, one of the Moabites, winds up being an ancestor to King David & Jesus.

Then in the book of John we have another woman who was not quite a Jew. She was a Samaritan. She was a descendant of Jacob (an Israelite). But she lived in Samaria, an area that was considered non-Jewish because so many Gentiles lived there & so few people worshipped God there. Even the people there who were truly Jewish were considered non-Jews. When Jesus spoke to her, she was so surprised that a Jew would speak to her that her first sentence was: “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.” Jesus’ reply to her didn’t address that difference. I think in Jesus’ eyes that isn’t a difference at all. Jesus’ response to her was a teaching about living water, using natural water as an object lesson.

About the living water:
1) Jesus wants us to want it. He told the woman that if she knew who He was, she’d ask Him for living water.
2) God desires worshippers who worship Him in spirit and in truth (verse 24). This is in contrast to worship based on a particular place (i.e. Jerusalem in verse 21) or by a particular group of people (i.e. the Jews in verse 22).
3) The living water is the Holy Spirit flowing from the believers. We don’t see that in this chapter. It’s described later in chapter 7:
John 7:37-39 (NIV) -- 37 On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.


Jesus asks so little from us in contrast to what He gives us. He asked this woman for some natural water to drink. In the end, she got living water from Him. It was living water in that it flowed from her onto others that she told about Jesus. Jesus used a woman whom most of the religious people of the day considered an outcast not good enough to even speak to.