Episode 1303: Thirsty

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,303 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:08] Jared Williams: I'm Jared Williams with Biblical Wealth Solutions. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling.

[00:00:19] Having the ability to invest without compromising your Christian values is key, and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this The Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott.

[00:00:38] Scott Maderer: And yet all too often we still choose to thirst. We still choose to live in fear. We choose to live in the feeling that if we don't do the right thing, if we don't say the right thing, if we don't act the right way. Somehow or another, that living water will be yanked away from us and we will thirst [00:01:00] again.

[00:01:01] Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in. Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:33] In today's spiritual foundation episode, I talk with you about Exodus chapter 17, verse one through seven, and about John chapter four, verses five through 42. I share how we all. And out of that thirst, conflict and fear arise, and I also talk about what Jesus' response is to our thirsting. Exodus chapter 17 verses one through seven says, [00:02:00] from the wilderness of sin, the whole congregation of the Israelites, journey by stages as the Lord commanded, they camped atidum, but there was no water for the people.

[00:02:10] The people quarreled with Moses and said, give us water to drink. And Moses said to them, why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord? But the people thirsted there for water. And the people complained against Moses and said, why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?

[00:02:29] So Moses cried out to the Lord, what shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to. The Lord said to Moses, go ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you. Take in your hand the staff, which you struck the Nile, and go, I will be standing there in front of you on the rocks at Horrib.

[00:02:47] Strike the rock and the water will come out of it so that the people may drink. Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Masa and Meab because the Israelites quarreled and [00:03:00] tested the Lord saying, is the Lord among us or, In John chapter four, verses five through 42. I'm not gonna read the whole passage word for word, but this is that famous story where Jesus goes to the well in.

[00:03:15] Samaritan in a city called ccar, and there was a well there that was called Jacob's. And a Samaritan woman approaches him and he asks her for a drink. He asks her to give him water, and then there's this long dialogue between. Him and the woman about how can he do that because there's no bucket and so on.

[00:03:39] And eventually he speaks to her and prophesizes to her and tells her who she is and how she's been living and what is going on in her heart and her mind and her soul. And they have a debate about whether or not Samaritans and Jews are saved and what's happening at the time. [00:04:00] And yet at the end she says, I hear this and she runs off and she spreads Jesus' story to the whole town and they believe her, and then they come and they follow Jesus because they hear and see his word.

[00:04:17] Now these two passages are both about water in some senses at least. A topical level, and we are thirsty people. Water is extremely important. There's billions of liters or gallons of water drank in bottled water every single year. And if you think about other things, like other kinds of drinks or other liquids, or just the water we drink from the tap or from other sources, that isn't bottled water.

[00:04:48] It's even. and medical research says that water consumption is a good thing, whether you're thirsty or not. Drinking water is good for your health. It's important to you. It helps you [00:05:00] do better. Water is essential to life itself. You've probably heard you can go multiple days, nine days, 10 days, eight days without food, but only two or three days without.

[00:05:14] and that may not be exactly right. It depends on a lot of variables, but at the end of the day, what it does boil down to is you can actually go without food longer than you can go without water. I live in South Texas. We often have droughts down here and we begin to pray for rain. And it's something that we all talk about as the drought and how bad it is.

[00:05:35] We pay a lot of attention to the availability of water. And in some ways I. Many of us in the industrial world are spoiled. We don't understand how desperate it is to have the availability of water. Where I live, we have a well and we have a pump, and we get water out of the ground, and if that pump fails, which it actually [00:06:00] has recently, we don't have water in our house and we have to haul water or bring water from somewhere else.

[00:06:08] and trust me, whenever our pump broke, it was a very high priority in our world, in our life, in our day-to-day. Getting the water back up and running was a major focus, a major place. We spent energy because water is important globally, there's a water crisis. There are many parts of the world where they do not have access to good, pure drinking water.

[00:06:32] A real level, we are thirsty and we are probably getting thirstier. So then if you look at this passage in the Hebrew Bible, in the Exodus passage, you might be able to get a little bit of a sense of how the Israelites were feeling. Th this isn't just a little whining or a little bit of discomfort that happens at the end of a long camping trip.

[00:06:58] Now this is a matter [00:07:00] of life and. There. There's actually another version or another story about water in the Rock in numbers 20, but this Exodus story is another one. There's a theme going on around water. They're wandering in the desert and the fact that they can't find water or they didn't pack enough water to last for 40 years, that's predictable.

[00:07:25] So water is obviously something that is important in this. There's different places where we think that this place is, but what it boils down to is there a place without water? And it says they quarreled with Moses and asked him to give them water to drink. What's interesting is the original word here in Hebrew is literally a word that means to file a complaint.

[00:07:49] That they're basically saying, Moses needs to stop being our leader because he's not doing a good. There's this thirst in this anger and this [00:08:00] frustration that seems to be left over, but this is a pretty ultimatum move. This isn't just a little bit of discomfort. This is a give us water or get out.

[00:08:12] And yet Moses looks at them and says, by challenging me, you're challenging God. How dare you distrust me. We, I rescued you from slavery. And they basically say, yeah you call this a rescue. here we are, our children, our animals, ourselves. We're all dying of thirst. We're in trouble. And what are you going to do about it?

[00:08:34] What's God going to do about it? It's clear in here that when needs are not being met, especially essential life giving needs, then trust collapses. The community begins to erode because survival is at. , even if it just feels like survival is at stake, trust and community begins to erode. The evidence of this is that no one is [00:09:00] act acting really graciously within this.

[00:09:02] Moses is yelling at them. They're yelling at Moses there. There's no one really being spiritual or godly here other than God and what God says. You can almost hear the sigh. This feeling of tolerance, this feeling of, all right, let me solve the problem. I'll stand before you, which is a humbling act for Moses here because he's represented as a representative of God, but he didn't actually act with graciousness.

[00:09:36] He yells back at them. He's angry himself. He feels attacked. Here, the person isn't grateful, even though kindness is being done for them. And you gotta expect that Moses is not feeling particularly giving at this point. He's helped before, and now again, they're yelling again. This is [00:10:00] a bit of a, an overreaction on Moses' part as.

[00:10:05] And here this first lesson is that God is giving them a drink to the thirsty. Regardless of how they responded to that blessing, God will provide. That's one of the messages in this God will provide. And secondly, someone called to represent God. And when we're re responding to human need, it reflects not just on us, but on.

[00:10:34] and that's part of the response to the need here, that we need to respond with grace and with love. But that's also hard to do and this is a reminder of the fact that we're still human and we have to be careful because often we respond out of our humanness. I know I do. We also see a reminder of our own human need, the need for life giving water [00:11:00] that God has provide.

[00:11:02] This life giving water, and it's our job to be stewards of this, to take care of it. And sometimes we forget how blessed we are to have access to those things. Maybe if we knew how to fill the emptiness, the loneliness, the fear that we all have, maybe we wouldn't feel so threatened, so worried, and Maybe when we are parched and dry, we could find that water. And that's the other story. That's the story from John, which is why I wanted to paraphrase it. See, Jesus here is saying when that thirsty woman came to him and he's thirsty, in turn he asked her to give him. . She's a woman a flesh and bread person.

[00:11:53] Though she's not given a name, she's very important in the story, and Jesus just crosses the [00:12:00] barriers. He's talking to a Samaritan, he's talking to a woman. This is crazy. There's no just here. Jesus is choosing to love on this woman that at every level appears to not deserve. , every encounter we have can be filled with that chance to honor the God in others.

[00:12:27] Jesus asked her for a drink. He knows what's going on, but he doesn't approach her with a feeling of, you're broken. Let me fix you. Instead, he says, I'm thirsty too. You are thirsty. That's why you're here, and I'm thirsty. then faced with shock. He says, I can help you with your thirst as easily as you could have helped me with mine.

[00:12:51] And that's where that long dialogue about You don't have a bucket, comes in too. You don't have what I need. You've got words, you've got ideas. You're a prophet, a [00:13:00] philosopher, an idea giver. But what I really need is the practical. I need a bucket so I can get some. And often we drop down our own bucket in the well and we drink and we drink and we drink, and yet we still thirst.

[00:13:15] It might settle us for a while, but in the long term we come back to thirsting again, and this is where she ask him for that living water that he talked. She doesn't really understand it probably yet at this point, but there's still a feeling of hope there, of maybe connecting in a different way. And she reaches for it.

[00:13:40] And because of that, Jesus responds. He says, you're right to hope. You're right to seek this, your right to seek me. And that seems to be all it takes. She doesn't understand completely. We don't understand completely. We don't have to understand complet. There [00:14:00] isn't some sort of ritual or thing you must do.

[00:14:03] We just have to want it. And then Jesus says, if you drink of this water, you'll never be thirsty. And yet, all too often we still choose to thirst. We still choose to live in fear. We choose to live in the feeling that if we don't do the right thing, if we don't say the right thing, if we don't act the right way, then.

[00:14:28] Somehow or another, that living water will be yanked away from us and we will thirst again. But Jesus is saying it isn't that hard. It's simple. Come to me. Let me give you the living water and it will fill the emptiness. Thanks for listening.

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