Jesus Christ blends in one sentence, startling in its boldness, the gift of God, and Himself as the Bestower. This Man, exhausted for want of a draught of water, speaks with parched lips a claim most singularly in contrast with the request which He had just made: I will give thee the living water.' No wonder that the woman was bewildered, and could only say, The well is deep, and Thou hast nothing to draw with.' She might have said, Why then dost Thou ask me?' The words were meant to create astonishment, in order that the astonishment might awaken interest, which would lead to the capacity for further illumination. Suppose you had been there, had seen the Man whom she saw, had heard the two things that she heard, and knew no more about Him than she knew, what would you have thought of Him and His words? Perhaps you would have been more contemptuous than she was. See to it that, since you know so much that explains and warrants them, you do not treat them worse than she did.
Jesus Christ claims to give God's gifts. He is able to give to that poor, frivolous, impure-hearted and impure-lifed woman, at her request, the eternal life which shall still all the thirst of her soul, that had often in the past been satiated and disgusted, but had never been satisfied by any of its draughts.
And He claims that in this giving He is something more than a channel, because, says He, If thou hadst asked of Me I would give thee.' We sometimes think of the relation between God and Christ as being typified by that of some land-locked sea amidst remote mountains, and the affluent that brings its sparkling treasures to the thirsting valley. But Jesus Christ is no mere vehicle for the conveyance of a divine gift, but His own heart, His own power, His own love are in it; and it is His gift just as much as it is God's.
Now I do not do more than pause for one moment to ask you to think of what inference is necessarily involved in such a claim as this. If we know anything about Jesus Christ at all, we know that He spoke in this tone, not occasionally, but habitually. It will not do to pick out other bits of His character or actions and admire these and ignore the characteristic of His teachings--His claims for Himself. And I have only this one word to say, if Jesus Christ ever said anything the least like the words of my text, and if they, were not true, what was He but a fanatic who had lost His head in the fancy of His inspiration? And if He said these words and they were true, what is He then? What but that which this Gospel insists from its beginning to its end that He was--the Eternal Word of God, by whom all divine revelation from the beginning has been made, and who at last became flesh' that we might receive of His fulness,' and therein be filled with all the fulness of God.' Other alternative I, for my part, see none.
But I would have you notice, too, the connection between these human needs of the Saviour and His power to give the divine gift. Why did He not simply say to this woman, If thou knewest who I am?' Why did He use this periphrasis of my text, Who it is that saith unto thee, "Give Me to drink"? Why but because He wanted to fix her attention on the startling contradiction between His appearance and His claims --on the one hand asserting divine prerogative, on the other forcing into prominence human weakness and necessity, because these two things, the human weakness and the divine prerogative, are inseparably braided together and intertwined. Some of you will remember the great scene in Shakespeare where the weakness of Caesar is urged as a reason for rejecting his imperial authority:--
Ay! and that tongue of his, that bade the RomansMark him, and write his speeches in their books,
Alas! it cried, "Give me some drink,
And the inference that is drawn is, how can he be fit to be a ruler of men? But we listen to our Caesar and Emperor, when He asks this woman for water, and when He says on the Cross, I thirst,' and we feel that these are not the least of His titles to be crowned with many crowns. They bring Him nearer to us, and they are the means by which His love reaches its end, of bestowing upon us all, if we will have it, the cup of salvation. Unless He had said the one of these two things, He never could have said the other. Unless the dry lips had petitioned, Give Me to drink,' the gracious lips could never have said, I will give thee living water.' Unless, like Jacob of old, this Shepherd could say, In the day the drought consumed Me,' it would have been impossible that the flock shall hunger no more, neither shall they thirst any more, … for the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall lead them to living fountains of water.'
