Considering Culture: The Water Faucet

We live on a little blue dot hanging out in space called Earth. Astronomers tell us that, in all the known universe, our planet is unique in very important ways -- ways that sustain life as we know it. Sure, that notion has come under fire in recent years but, as of this moment in history, we have yet to discover a planet like ours. One of the most unique features about Earth is that it contains a vast supply of a life sustaining liquid known as water. That is also the reason our planet is a lovely blue. Over seventy-percent of the Earth's surface is covered by water, and our bodies are roughly sixty-percent water. Because water is essential for life as we know it, the equation is very simple: no water = no life.

So we are fortunate (to put it mildly) to live on this rare planet that can sustain life. Those of us who live in a developed country are doubly fortunate in that we have easy access to potable water. For much of human history the acquisition of safe drinking water was a formidable challenge, and it continues to be a challenge in underdeveloped regions of the world. According to the World Health Organization, eleven percent of the world’s population still lack reliable sources of safe drinking water. In terms of numbers, that represents almost 800 million people, a population more than double that of the United States. It also must be remembered that water is vital for our food supply and sanitation as well. When there is a crisis in the water supply, malnutrition and disease are sure to follow.

If you're reading this, chances are you have never experienced life-threatening thirst and dehydration due to a lack of potable water. Those of us in the developed world have a constant, abundant, and convenient supply of water at our fingertips. We turn a couple of knobs and temperature adjusted water comes gushing from a faucet (Even my parents didn't enjoy this level of luxury during their childhood.) Furthermore, if the bottled water industry is any indication, we've also become water connoisseurs. Because if tap water is not to our liking, we will pay a premium for our favorite "brand" of bottled drinking water. People who are desperate for water are not concerned with such things. As modern people, we have no idea what it is like to live under conditions in which water is hard to come by. Due to our effortless access to water, we hardly give it a thought.

By comparison, ancient cities were usually built around natural water sources. Although parts of the ancient world had impressive aqueduct systems and a network of wells, it was still a lot of work for the average family to retrieve enough water for their daily needs. The acquisition of water occupied a great deal of their time, and it meant carrying heavy water jars to and from a well, or some other source of water. It was also common to mix water with wine as a disinfectant because, more often than not, water was unsafe to drink by itself. How many hours of your day are occupied with retrieving and disinfecting water? I'm guessing none. To live in a modern culture, is to live in a state of comfort and luxury that would have been completely foreign to the ancient commoner.

So what does this have to do with Bible study, and why am I going through such pains to point this out? This is why: Because of modernity and our easy access to water, to a large degree, the evocative power of a biblical phrase like living water is lost on us. But to a people group that lived in an ancient desert (people like the woman at the well), it would have had a far more powerful impact due to their keen awareness of their dependence on water. Because of modernity and the water faucet, we lack that awareness, even though we are just as needy. In other words, we take water for granted. But if something were to happen to our water supply, in less than a day, we would become very desperate very quickly.

When Jesus offered living water, He was making a powerful statement to people who were desperate for water. He was drawing an analogy between our physical need for water, and our spiritual need for Him. In the same way that our bodies are dependent on water for physical life, we are dependent on Christ for spiritual life. Jesus is claiming that we are spiritually dead without Him. He is also claiming that, in the same way we are physically cleansed, refreshed and sustained by water, we are spiritually cleansed, refreshed and sustained by Him. Water is both a necessity and a deeply satisfying joy; there is no substitute. The same is true of Christ. Furthermore, Jesus didn’t only promise to give us living water, He promised to give us the very source of living water, the Holy Spirit.

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. -- John 7:37-39

*****

Once again, I must borrow from C.S. Lewis with an excerpt from The Silver Chair (book #4 in the Narnia series). A little girl named Jill Pole had gotten herself into a bit of trouble, and she decided to run from Aslan who is a Christ figure in the land of Narnia. Jill is lost and thirsty, and despite her best efforts to avoid Aslan, she finds him waiting for her by a stream of water, his stream of water.

"Are you not thirsty?" said the Lion.

"I’m dying of thirst," said Jill.

"Then drink," said the Lion.  

"May I -- could I -- would you mind going away while I drink?" said Jill.

The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. As Jill gazed at this momentous bulk, she realized she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.

"Will you promise not to do anything to me if I do come?" said Jill. 

“I make no promise," said the Lion.  

Jill was so thirsty that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer. "Do you eat girls?" she asked.  

“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings, emperors, cities, and realms," said the Lion. He didn’t say it as if he were boasting or as if he were sorry or as if he were angry. He just said it. 

"I dare not come and drink," said Jill. 

"Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion. 

"Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer." I suppose I must go look for another stream then." 

“There is no other stream," said the Lion. 

It never occurred to Jill to disbelieve the Lion -- no one who had ever seen his stern face could ever do that -- and her mind suddenly made itself up. It was the worst thing she ever had to do, but she went forward to the stream, knelt down, and began scooping up the water in her hand. It was the coldest, most refreshing water she ever tasted. You didn't need to drink much of it, for it quenched your thirst at once. 

*****

There is another profound truth that is waiting to be discovered and it is this: The very reason water exists is to point us to Christ. Why do I believe that? Because Christ was slain from before the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8). When Christ used water as analogy for Himself, it was not an afterthought; it was according to the foreordained will of God. Nothing God does is an afterthought -- and all of creation, including water, sings to His glory. So the next time you enjoy your water faucet, a refreshing glass of ice water, or a swim in a lake, you would do well to remember -- what water is to the body, Christ is to the soul. The equation is very simple: know Jesus = know Life.

Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. -- 1 John 5:12

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

"We never hear the Gospel until we've been made uneasy by it"

-- Ravi Zacharias

This week we are going to look at one of the most familiar passages in all of Scripture, John chapter 3. I say that because so many people, Christian and unbeliever alike, can probably quote John 3:16 from heart:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

Because this passage is so familiar, I'm guessing that there is a good chance you didn't read the entire verse above, or give it serious thought. Which brings us to the old saying, "Familiarity breeds contempt". Although contempt might be too strong a word, at the very least, familiarity does breed a level of apathy and indifference. I believe John 3:16 is too often dismissed by unbelievers as well as Christians. It is dismissed by unbelievers as foolishness, and it is often dismissed by Christians as mere milk, or a starting point from which we should quickly move beyond. But in reality, there is so much theological richness in this verse, we will be mining its treasure into eternity. In this verse we see the nature of the Triune God and His many attributes such as wrath, righteousness, mercy, grace, love, and holiness, working in perfect harmony to redeem fallen humanity.

In fact, because we live in a culture that has a church on every corner, and because a lot of silliness is done in the name of Christ (note picture above), we tend to view the entire Bible with a kind of "been there, done that" complacency. That being the case, sometimes it can be a challenge to come to the Bible (especially familiar passages like John 3) with a fresh set of eyes, and a heart of anticipation that is ready to receive from God's Word. It is my hope and prayer that, as we read this familiar passage of Scripture, we will be able to see it with new eyes and grow in our understanding of the person and work of Christ. So let us unlearn the silliness, and examine these things with a new sobriety and attention to detail.

In John 3, we are introduced to a man named Nicodemus, a Pharisee and leader of the Jews, and we are more like him than we realize. When Jesus began teaching him about salvation and the Kingdom of God, Nicodemus did not understand. The teachings of Christ were shocking and unsettling to Nicodemus. Jesus replied, "Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?" (John 3:10).

There is a gentle rebuke from Jesus in those words to Nicodemus, and by extension, there is a rebuke to you and me as well. How is it that Nicodemus could be a highly esteemed teacher in Israel who spent his life studying the Scriptures, and yet, he did not understand what Christ was saying to him? It was because his heart was dull and glazed over with sin, self-righteousness, and a poor understanding of Scripture. But I won't be too hard on Nicodemus, because we will soon discover (in the following chapters of John) that the disciples of Christ had similar problems. And guess what, we do as well. It is the human condition.

Part of the problem with modern "churchianity" is that we have tried to file down the hard edges from Scripture and fashion a god in our own image. We've tried to explain away difficult passages that pierce the heart and shock our sensibilities. We are guilty of wrapping the Gospel in a user-friendly media package that is sure to offend no one. But when that happens, the Bible is no longer being taught.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. -- Proverbs 27:6

Here's the reality, the claims of Christ are shocking and unsettling, regardless of the era and place in which you live. They were shocking in Jesus' day, and they are shocking to our generation as well. Great kingdoms have come and gone, but the Word of Christ remains. His words echo through time, and they continue to confront us to this very minute.

If the words of Christ do not, at times, unsettle us and rattle our shaky foundations, we are not hearing them correctly. Christ does something that makes us all uncomfortable; He is the faithful friend that tells the truth about our condition, and wounds our foolish and self-righteous pride.

As a result, fallen cultures tend to deal with the Bible in a few different ways; it will change the message to fit the culture, ridicule the Bible, or ban it all together. But it has proven to be a hard book to ignore.

C.S. Lewis wanted to break through that cultural blindness when he wrote The Chronicles of Narnia. He wanted to awaken our hearts to awe and wonder so we could better understand the true nature of Christ. In Chronicles, Lewis wrote about a Christ-like figure named Aslan, a mighty lion who sang the world of Narnia into existence. When a little girl named Lucy first heard about Aslan, she was frightened and wanted to know if Aslan was safe. To which Mr. Beaver replied, "Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you."

What we've tried to do is make God "safe" and easy to manage. Or, to put it in the vernacular of Lewis, we've tried to "tame" God. We want a God that we can control. We've tried to change Christ, whom the Bible calls the Lion of Judah, into something as benign and innocuous as Barney the purple dinosaur. But that is not the Christ of Scripture. To truly read Scripture is to encounter Christ, and that is like walking side by side with a lion. We can only do that by the good graces of the Lion, we are not in control.

 

Like Nicodemus, we become unsettled, and begin to discover that everything we thought we knew about God, and even what we thought we knew about ourselves, begins to change when confronted with the person of Christ. (That is not only true before we are Christians, that continues to happen after we are Christians.) 

John 3 is both comforting and unsettling. It is shocking to our sensibilities, because we learn that we are alienated from God by our sin and abide under His wrath (John 3:36). We learn that it is our nature to run from the light of Christ because our deeds are evil (John 3:19-20). We also learn in Romans that we are perishing under a death sentence -- both physical and spiritual (Romans 6:23). It is against this backdrop of despair that we learn about an amazing hope, and the Gospel shines like a brilliant sunrise after a long dark night of the soul. We read, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

In John 3, we can see the eternal landscape, from the deep chasms of despair and alienation from God, to the mountain peaks of hope we find in the Gospel of Christ. The Gospel means good news, but we can only understand the good news in light of the bad news about our true condition. And with that truth, Jesus brings grace upon grace (John 1:16-17) and love beyond measure (Romans 5:6-8, Romans 8:38-39).