John 4:10–14: “Jesus answered her, ‘If you had known the gift of God, and who it is who said to you, “Give Me some water to drink,” you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.’
‘Sir,’ the woman said to Him, ‘You have no bucket and the well is deep. Where then do You get this living water? Surely You are not greater than our ancestor Jacob, are You? For he gave us this well and drank from it himself, along with his sons and his livestock.’
Jesus replied, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks some of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. But the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.’”
Jesus Christ is talking about spiritual things here, while this woman thinks that Jesus Christ is talking about something natural, something physical.
Repeatedly, you have Jesus Christ using physical things that they can see to derive a spiritual analogy. This is one example: He asks this woman for water and then says, “You would have asked Him.” So He is saying the spiritual water is yours for the asking.
In another place, He multiplied bread and fed thousands, and they came looking for Him soon afterward because they wanted more bread. He said, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that lasts for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” When they said, “Give us this bread,” He said, “I am the bread of life that has come down from heaven” (John 6:26–35).
So He is constantly using what they can see to explain spiritual things, what they cannot see.
Another example is when He had a discussion with Nicodemus. Nicodemus came to Him and said, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher who has come from God.” Jesus answered, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” He uses the natural phenomenon of birth to communicate something spiritual: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven” (John 3:1–3).
Something you know very well, He uses to impress on you something divine, something in the unseen realm. We see it with the Samaritan woman. We see it with the people looking for bread. We see it with the analogy of spiritual birth.
He is saying, “The water I am going to give you is spiritual water; it is water in the spirit.” If you want to talk about something that is transformational, physical birth is a powerful picture—“Except a man be born again.”
With these kinds of illustrations, Jesus Christ grabs our attention. As the One who came from heaven, as the way, the truth, and the life, He grabs our attention to impress on us, to impact us with spiritual truth.
Nicodemus was wondering, just as this woman was wondering: “You want to give me water? You do not even have something to draw water with. What kind of claim do You have to be able to get water? You are the one asking me for water, and You are saying You will give me water?”
But He is talking about another dimension, another realm, another reality—spiritual reality.
When you come to Jesus Christ’s conversation with Nicodemus, after Jesus said, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” Nicodemus, similar to what this woman said, is still thinking of natural things when Jesus is talking about spiritual things. So Jesus says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6), telling him, “I am talking about something different here. I am talking about something divine here, something unique here, something out of this world here.”
He is talking about eternal life. He is talking about you having eternal life through Him.
God bless you. See you later.