INTRODUCITON:
“By the Water" by Ellyn Sanna p 13 Summer
At
funerals I always tell a story about Nathan that leads into Psalm 23. He gave
me a book 15 years age for my birthday (read intro) and the prayer titled
“Summertime” says this (read p 13).
Summer time can be a great time by the Lake which I just had or it can
be a time of excessive heat and drought which we also experience.
Drought in US
Woman Jesus at the
well
The
Amazon River is the largest river in the world. The mouth is 90 miles across.
There is enough water to exceed the combined flow of the Yangtze, Mississippi,
and Nile Rivers. So much water comes from the Amazon that they can detect its
currents 200 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean.
Drought in Idaho
Drought in Twin Falls 
WATER IS ESSENTIAL FOR LIFE
Survivor reality
shows – show that the most essential element to have for survival is WATER but
often difficult to find (uncontaminated):
TV: Survivor *Survivor Man * Dual Survival * Extreme
Survival * Ultimate Survival Alaska
*
The Best Defense: Survival! * Surviving Disaster * I Shouldn't Be Alive * Get Out Alive * Expedition
Impossible * Naked and Afraid * Man
vs. Wild * Man, Woman, Wild
* Out of the Wild – In
each – water is the main element for survival – without water – we perish!
DEHYDRATION DESCRIBED
As the body becomes increasingly
deficient in water, certain symptoms follow in order. At the beginning of
dehydration there is thirst and discomfort. Succeeding symptoms, are lassitude,
loss of appetite, sleepiness, rise in body temperature and, at about 5 per cent
dehydration, nausea. At from 6 to 10 per cent dehydration, the victim will
experience dizziness, headache, tingling in the limbs, dry mouth, difficulty in
speaking, and inability to walk. At more than 10 per cent dehydration, delirium
is common, and the senses fail. Dehydration of 25 per cent is probably fatal at
any temperature.
Contrary to those that try to
paint a picture of a gentle process, death by dehydration is a cruel, inhumane
and often agonizing death.
SCRIPTURE DESCIRPTION OF DROUGHT
Jeremiah 14:1-6
This is the word of the Lord to Jeremiah
concerning the drought: "Judah mourns, her cities languish; they wail for
the land, and a cry goes up from Jerusalem. The nobles send their servants for
water; they go to the cisterns but find no water. They return with their jars
unfilled; dismayed and despairing, they cover their heads. 4
The ground is cracked because there is no rain in the land; the farmers are
dismayed and cover their heads. 5 Even the doe in the field deserts her
newborn fawn because there is no grass. 6 Wild donkeys stand on the barren heights and
pant like jackals; their eyesight fails for lack of pasture."
Why does a loving God allow
drought? Is drought God’s fault?
THE DROUGHT IS MY FAULT - BUT GOD BRINGS WATER
Jeremiah 17:4-8
Through your own fault you will lose the
inheritance I gave you. I will enslave you to your enemies in a land you do not
know, for you have kindled my anger, and it will burn forever." This is what the Lord says: "Cursed is
the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose
heart turns away from the Lord. He will
be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He
will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one
lives.
7
"But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in
him. 8 He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots
by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It
has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit."
Drought vs. Water is a theme throughout Jeremiah / Go back to Jeremiah
2:13
(Perfect description of throwing
away the gift of God because we want control and believe we can do it better
than God) "My people have
committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have
dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
WORLD’S LACK OF DRINKING WATER
1.1 billion people has no access to any type of improved
drinking source of water. As a direct consequence:
1.6 million people die every year from diarrhoeal diseases
(including cholera) attributable to lack of access to safe drinking water and
basic sanitation and 90% of these are children under 5, mostly in developing
countries;
160 million people are infected with schistosomiasis causing
tens of thousands of deaths yearly; 500 million people are at risk of trachoma
from which 146 million are threatened by blindness and 6 million are visually
impaired;
133 million suffering from high intensity intestinal
infections; there are around 1.5 million cases of clinical hepatitis A every
year.
Clean drinking water went from 77% per cent of the earth’s
population in 1990 to 88.5% in 2015. This means that nearly 1 billion people
gained access to improved water sources during this period.
An improvement but
still a crisis. Water is essential to life just as Living Water is essential to
eternal life.
Hindus & Buddists: 900,000,000 - stable in terms of
global percentage
Of no religion: 1,100,000,000 - tending to decline in terms
of global percentage
Christians: 2,100,000,000 - tending to decline in terms of
global percentage
Muslims: 1,500,000,000 - tending to increase in terms of
global percentage
John 4:5-14
So Jesus came to a town in Samaria called
Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as
he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. When a
Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to
buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to
him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan
woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with
Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a
drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."
11 "Sir," the woman said,
"you have nothing to draw with and the well is
deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father
Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and
his flocks and herds?" 13 Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14
but whoever drinks the water I give him will never
thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water
welling up to eternal life."
This conversation was considered inappropriate by everyone
except Jesus.
a) The
woman questioned why a Jew would ask her for a drink.
b) The
disciples marveled that Jesus spoke with her (v. 27).
c) John
even notes that the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.
Jesus will go
wherever there is a need to offer sinners new life – the parched – Living
Water! (Matthew 9:10-13 While
Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners
came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they
asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax
collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the
healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”)
1. Living water symbolizes eternal life. (John 7:38-39) “Whoever believes in me, as
Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from
within them.” By this he meant the Spirit.
Living water is a gift of God.
One irony of
ancient navigation is that sailors died for lack of water--caught in windless
waters of the South Atlantic. They were adrift, helpless, dying of thirst.
Sometimes other ships from South America who knew the area would come alongside
and call out, "What is your problem?" And they would exclaim, "Can you spare us some water? Our sailors are dying of
thirst!" And from the other
ship would come the cry, "just lower your
buckets. You are in the mouth of the mighty Amazon River."
The irony of ancient
Israel and the tragedy around us today is that God, the fountain of living
water, is right here and parched thirsty people refuse to drink!
John 7:37-39
On the last and greatest day of the Feast,
Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone
is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the
Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."
Revelation 7:13-17
Then one of the elders asked me, "These in white robes — who are they, and where did they
come from?" I answered, "Sir, you know." And he said, "These
are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their
robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, "they are
before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who
sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. 16 Never again will they hunger; never again will they
thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. 17 For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their
shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water.
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