Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 770
Delivered by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“The woman said unto Him, Sir, give me this water.” John 4:15.
You will remember that our Savior had been speaking to the woman of Samaria concerning living water. He had endeavored to catch her attention by using a metaphor to her work and her position. Water was uppermost in her thoughts and Jesus sanctified the element to His own gracious end. Sitting at the well’s mouth, I think I can see His earnest face and note the woman’s wondering eyes while He talked to her as she had never been spoken to before concerning water which caused a man never to thirst again.
She was giving a material meaning to a spiritual utterance. She was thinking of the water that could moisten her lips, when Christ was speaking of that Living Water, His own Grace and love which touches the heart, and the heart only. Her eyes were dark but her face was turned the right way. And, best of all, Jesus was there, who can lead the blind in a way which they know not. It will be all well with her—you may leave her alone and think of yourselves.
I hope I am now conversing with some here who have gotten clear of this woman’s ignorance and have passed away also, as she did, from the period of questions. You know best who you are and where you are, but I hope you are desirous to partake of the Divine Grace which saves. You have got away from raising difficulties. You have had enough of that unprofitable hair-splitting and cobweb-making. You feel that you get no good by constantly insinuating doubts as to the possibility of your salvation and questioning whether Christ is a Savior or not.
And so you are about to leave the skeptical business, and try another route. You are now arrived at the point of desiring, not, I hope, the terminus of the route, but only the first or second station. I am glad that you have come so far. If there is Grace to be had, you are saying, “O that I might have it!” If there is pardon, peace, eternal life—you believe all that Jesus Christ says of it and you want to possess it. You are stretching out your hands like the drowning man who is ready to catch at the plank.
Your desires are awake. Your better thoughts are no longer slumbering. You have broken away from indifference and obstinacy—you are now anxious and desirous to obtain salvation by Jesus Christ. It is to you that I wish to speak this evening, and I shall first take the text and try to use it to excite your desire still further by a description of the water spoken of in the text. Secondly, I shall try to assure your hearts by some remarks upon the likelihood of your obtaining this water. And then we shall close by urging you not to leave this House of Prayer until the prayer has been registered in Heaven, “Lord, give me this water; give me this water tonight!”
I. To begin, then, I am TO TRY TO EXCITE YOUR DESIRE BY A DESCRIPTION OF THE WATER SPOKEN OF IN THE TEXT. Water is an essential element in the natural world. There is a spiritual world, in which describing we are obliged to use analogies taken from the natural world. And the Grace of God in the mental and the spiritual world is just what water is in the natural world. You need water as a man. You must have it—on certain occasions it becomes an imperative necessity—you must drink or die.
You need Divine Grace as a man—not for your body—but for your soul, and it is imperative that you should have it or else your soul will first be in pain here, and then at death the pangs of remorse will seize it, and afterwards an everlasting thirst—an unsatisfied need will be the second death to you. The Grace of God is like water in no less than eight
senses. But let me not alarm you. I will not weary you, be sure of that, for I long to win you and weariness will not serve my purpose. I shall only mention the eight parallels with a few remarks, and pass rapidly on from each one.
1. Water, first, is thirst-removing, and so is the Grace of God. The man who drinks water thirsts not. His bodily need is removed. The man who receives the Grace of God in his heart gets that which his nature is lacking, and his painful longings are over. Man by nature is so foolish that he does not know what his nature needs, but he feels that it needs something. Awakened men talk to themselves in this fashion, “I need—I do not know what I need—but I know I need something which the world cannot give me, which I cannot find within myself, which my fellow men cannot bestow upon me. I need something: O my God, what is it? Tell me what it is!”
Friend, if you are in this condition, the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is just the thing for you, for in it the Lord not only tells you what you need, but He presents it to you! He tells you that you need His love, that if His Grace is shed abroad in your heart, and your sin is pardoned, and you are made to be His child and accepted through Christ Jesus, then will your soul say, “Now I have what I needed. Now I need no more—I can sit still and say, Blessed be God that my desires are full. The aching void which the world could never fill is now filled to overflowing, and my soul has what it was always needing though it did not know what it really needed. I can sit down now perfectly content!”