Dig Deep Enough for Strangers

Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. — John 4:14

Into the Word

Jesus sat down, tired, beside Jacob’s well near the Samaritan town of Sychar (John 4:5-6). A woman came with her jar, and He asked her for a drink. When He began to speak of living water, she pointed to the well beneath them. “Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock” (John 4:12).

She had reason to be proud. Samaritans, a people most Jews of the day avoided (John 4:9), were still drawing water from Jacob’s well.

Jesus answered by talking about the water itself. “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again” (John 4:13). The water He offered would end thirst for good.

The Famine Amos Saw Coming

Long before Jesus came, the prophet Amos had warned of that thirst.

“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD, “when I will send a famine on the land— not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD” — Amos 8:11

In that day, he said, even “the lovely virgins and the young men shall faint for thirst” (Amos 8:13). Those with strength and their whole lives ahead of them would collapse because they could not find a word from God.

We see the same thing today. People with health and opportunity go from well to well, trying success, relationships, and new ideas, and still come away thirsty. Isaiah tells us where the water is: “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation” (Isa. 12:3). Amos showed us what people are really thirsty for, and it is the word of the LORD. The wells we need are dug in God’s Word, and someone has to dig them and keep them open.

They Filled the Wells, Isaac Dug Them Again

Isaac, Jacob’s father, knew what that takes. After Abraham died, the Philistines filled his wells with earth, and Isaac “dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father” (Gen. 26:18). When he dug new ones, the local herdsmen fought him for them. He named one Esek, contention, and the next Sitnah, enmity, and kept moving and digging until he found water no one disputed (Gen. 26:19-22).

He did not let the people around him decide whether his family would have water. His household and flocks would be thirsty tomorrow, so every time a well was stopped or taken, he picked up the tools again.

Digging for a Boy Behind a Plow

In the sixteenth century, William Tyndale dug the same way. At the time, church law in England forbade translating the Bible into English without a bishop’s approval. According to John Foxe, Tyndale told a clergyman who opposed him that if God spared his life, a boy who drives the plow would one day know more Scripture than the clergyman did. Tyndale left England and had his English New Testament printed in Germany in 1526. When copies were smuggled home, the Bishop of London bought them up and burned them. Tyndale kept translating until he was executed near Brussels in 1536.

He never met the boy behind the plow. Within a few years, an English Bible built largely on his work stood in churches across England, and much of his wording later passed into the King James Bible. English-speaking believers have been drinking from his well for nearly five hundred years.

Most of us will never translate a Bible, but we can still dig. We study God’s Word, return to it when it feels dry, and dig again when busyness or disappointment buries it, the way the Philistines buried Isaac’s wells. Then we share what we find, with a child at the kitchen table, a friend over coffee, or a class on Sunday morning. Our children will drink from that well, and so will people we never meet.

Before We Move On

Every one of us drinks from wells we did not dig. Someone opened the Scriptures for us, perhaps a parent, a Sunday school teacher, or a pastor who had studied them long enough to explain them well. Now it is our turn to dig deep into the Word and pass on what we find. Is our well deep enough for someone else to drink from?

The woman of Sychar came with an empty jar. She left it behind and went into town to tell everyone what she had found, and many in that town came to believe in Jesus (John 4:28-29, 39).

Someday a stranger with an empty jar will come to our well. Let us dig deep enough for them.

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Original source: Dig Deep Enough for Strangers — Bible Portal Insights

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