Life's Ever Springing Well

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John 4:11-12

The woman said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from where then have you that living water?…

You have been busy all the week with external things, let us now turn to the inner life. We make even our religion too much external — let us turn from ecclesiastical ceremonies and questions to the life of the soul. Spiritual life is —

I. A DIVINE GIFT.

1. It is not a principle dwelling in man naturally, to be brought out of obscurity. Man is dead in trespasses and sins.

2. It is not produced in men by their own efforts, through the imitation of good examples, early instruction or gradual reform.

3. It is the gift —

(1)  Of the Father, for He hath begotten us again into a lively hope.

(2)  Of the Son, through whose atoning sacrifice we receive it.

(3)  Of the Holy Ghost who dwelleth in us.

4. What is the practical lesson but that we must make our solemn appeal to the mercy of God for it? Justice awards death; grace alone can bring life.

II. INWARD AND PERSONAL.

1. "In Him." Unconverted men find it too much trouble to look after the inward life, but take an easier method and imitate its outward manifestation. In the churches are many Christians like the stuffed animals in a museum: there is no difference between them and the living except in the vital point. The invisible, but most real, indwelling of the Holy Spirit makes the difference between the sinner and the saint.

2. "In Him." It is a personal matter. The presence of life in fifty relatives is of no service to the fifty-first if he is dead. All religion that is not personal is void. All the virtue that adorned your ancestors will not save you. The water which Jesus gives must be in every one of us if we would be saved.

3. How fares it with thee? Suppose there were no chapels or churches or means of grace, wouldst thou still be a Christian?

III. A VIGOROUS AND ACTIVE PRINCIPLE. Not a stagnant pool, nor a stream gently gliding on, but a spring forcing itself upwards. Springs are in perpetual motion, and no known power can stop them.

1. If heaps of rubbish are piled upon them they will force a course for themselves. So grace can well up —

(1)  Through a mass of ignorance — as in very uninstructed but very beautiful Christians.

(2)  Through a mass of error — as in devout Roman Catholics.

2. Surrounding circumstances do not operate upon them as might be supposed. In frosty weather when the river is all ice the spring-head flows as ever. So a Christian may be placed in the worst circumstances, in an ungodly family, without the means of grace, but the inner life will not freeze.

3. This life passes through the severest ordeals and survives them — poverty, suffering, slander; over these the Christian triumphs.

4. Temptations threaten to destroy it; but let a man cast what rubbish he may into a living spring, the spring will purify itself and eject the filth, and so will the true Christian.

IV. A CONTINUAL AND EVERLASTING THING. Jesus might well have reminded the woman how many had gathered round that well and passed away, but there was the old well unchanged. So all the world may change, but the inward principle in the Christian does not decay. Some wells are drained dry by drought, or because some deeper well has taken away the supplies. But the Christian's spring never fails, because he has struck the main fountain. His life is hid with Christ in God.

V. PRE-EMINENTLY AND CONSTANTLY SATISFACTORY. He who has Christ in him, the hope of glory, is perfectly satisfied. He could not have been content with the whole world beside.

1. Learning would only have revealed his ignorance.

2. Fame would only have made him more ambitious.

3. Wealth would have bowed him down with avarice.

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