The purpose of this website is to provide free sermon manuscripts and sermon videos to pastors and missionaries throughout the world, especially the Third World, where there are few if any theological seminaries or Bible schools.

These sermon manuscripts and videos now go out to about 1,500,000 computers in over 221 countries every year at www.sermonsfortheworld.com. Hundreds of others watch the videos on YouTube, but they soon leave YouTube and come to our website. YouTube feeds people to our website. The sermon manuscripts are given in 46 languages to about 120,000 computers each month. The sermon manuscripts are not copyrighted, so preachers can use them without our permission. Please click here to learn how you can make a monthly donation to help us in this great work of preaching the Gospel to the whole world.

Whenever you write to Dr. Hymers always tell him what country you live in, or he cannot answer you. Dr. Hymers’ e-mail is rlhymersjr@sbcglobal.net.

This woman had come to the well to get water. Drinking water had to be carried by hand from the well to the house. Clear, cool, fresh water came out of this fountain.

Jesus was sitting on the edge of it. As the woman came closer, Jesus said to her, “Give me to drink.” The woman was surprised that He spoke to her. A Jewish man never talked alone to a woman. Beside that, she was a Samaritan. They were considered “half-Jews.” They had built their own temple on a mountain in Samaria. The Jews had burned it down. So there was great hostility between the Jews and the Samaritans.

This Samaritan woman was astonished when Jesus spoke to her. She had probably never spoken with a Jewish man in her whole life. Jesus said that if she knew who He was she would have “asked of him, and he would have given [her] living water” (John 4:10). She pointed out that He had nothing to draw water out, and that the well was deep. She asked where He would get “that living water.” She did not understand that He was using water as a metaphor.

Drinking water is something we must have in the material world. But there is a spiritual world as well. Christ often used things in the material world as metaphors, to describe things in the spiritual world. Here Christ used drinking water to describe the “living water” which springs “up into everlasting life” (John 4:14). Later, in the seventh chapter of John,

“Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” (John 7:37).

Jesus Himself is the “living water”! He said to the woman,

“Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:13-14).

Christ Himself is the water of life! Christ is like drinking water in five ways.

I. First, water satisfies thirst.

When a person drinks water his thirst is quenched. When a person receives Christ, he receives deep inner satisfaction that he can find nowhere else. When a person begins to be spiritually awakened, he begins to realize that he wants something that this world cannot give to him.

It is sad that most people never become aware of that. They go on, thinking that there is something that can satisfy them, if only they had it. “If only I had more money, I would be satisfied,” they think. “If only I had this job, or that position, I would be peaceful inside.” They think, “If I had this, or that, I would be satisfied.” But that is a Satanic delusion. The great hymn writer Horatius Bonar wrote,

I heard the voice of Jesus say, “Behold, I freely give
The living water; thirsty one, Stoop down, and drink, and live.”
I came to Jesus, and I drank Of that life-giving stream;
My thirst was quenched, my soul revived, And now I live in Him.
   (“I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” by Horatius Bonar, 1808-1889).

Only Jesus can satisfy your soul,
   And only He can change your heart and make you whole,
He’ll give you peace you never knew, Love and joy and Heaven too,
   For only Jesus can satisfy your soul.
(“Only Jesus Can Satisfy Your Soul” by Lanny Wolfe, 1971).

Water removes thirst physically. Jesus removes spiritual thirst and satisfies the soul like a drink of cool water on a hot day.

II. Second, water gives life.

I lived near Death Valley for several months one summer as a boy. I knew from that experience what it feels like to be very, very thirsty. Out there on the hot floor of the desert, I saw many whitened bones of animals that had died of thirst. A few gulps of water would have preserved their lives, but these poor creatures found no life-preserving stream. Oh for a glass of cool water there! And far out on the salty sea, a man stranded on a raft looks out and sees,

Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
  (“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” 
             by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834).

The man on that raft may seek to cool his tongue with salt water from the ocean, but if he drinks it he will die a horrible death. Many a rotted corpse has been found on rafts like that, the body bloated, the eyes bulging out of their sockets, the black tongue, pickled with salt, protruding from the salt-poisoned body.

Oh, how many souls have turned from Jesus to the sins of the world, only to become dead men, their bones bleached in the sun, like those I saw in Death Valley. Oh, how many souls have drunk of the polluted sins of the world, only to be pickled alive by drinking the salt-poisoned brew.

God must draw you to Christ, who is the water of life! No one but Jesus can take away your thirst and give you the satisfaction within that comes by union with Him.

III. Third, water cleanses filth.

Passing through a desert, a poor traveller, caked with sweat and grime and filth, comes to a pool of cold, clear water. He throws himself into it, as Naaman the Leper threw himself into the Jordan River, and he comes up from that pool with a shining face, for his filth has been washed away. Now the foul, sin-besmirched sinner can come to Christ, plunge into His cleansing Blood, and come out as clean and white as snow!

Amazing grace! ’tis Heaven below To feel the blood applied,
And Jesus, only Jesus know, My Jesus crucified.
The cleansing stream I see! I see! I plunge, and oh, it cleanseth me!
Oh, praise the Lord! It cleanseth me! It cleanseth me - yes, cleanseth me.
   (“The Cleansing Wave” by Phoebe Palmer, 1807-1874).

Thy sins are written in black on the pages of God’s judgment books in Heaven. But thank God they can be cleansed by Christ’s Blood, for Christ is the cleansing water of life!

IV. Fourth, water is softening.

When I was a boy casual shirts were made of cotton and were full of starch when you bought them at the store. You never wanted to wear one of those shirts until they had been washed. The water took the starch out of them, and made them soft and flexible.

So it is with hardened hearts. The more we preach Christ Jesus, the more liable we are to see hardened sinners become soft and pliable. The Gospel of Christ is heart-softening.

It seems to me that there are some here this morning who say, “I am so hardened. I cannot feel my sin and guilt as I should.” Think more often about Jesus and your hardened heart will soften. Think of Him suffering under the weight of your sin, sweating great drops of Blood in Gethsemane. Think of Him under the cruel whip in Pilate’s palace. Think of Him nailed to the Cross, dying for your sin, paying the full price for your redemption. Fix your mind on the crucified Christ and you will soon find that the “living water” of Jesus will soften your heart and be in you “a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”

Lord, now indeed I find Thy power and Thine alone,
Can change the leper’s spots And melt the heart of stone.
Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.
   (“Jesus Paid It All” by Elvina M. Hall, 1820-1889).

Christ will “take the starch out of you” (as the old-timers said) and soften your heart!

V. Fifth, water puts out fire.

With all of our new inventions and chemicals, there is still nothing better to put out a fire than water. Last summer my wife and I went to the Hollywood Bowl for a concert. A large fire had started in the hills south of the amphitheater. We were afraid that the smoke would disturb the concert. But then we saw helicopters flying in with loads of water from a nearby dam. They swooped down over the fire and dropped loads of water on it. Soon the fire was quenched, and the concert went on uninterrupted.

Spurgeon said, concerning the water of life,

For the soul that is washed in this fountain, there is no hell in which God can punish it. How can he punish a pardoned sinner? How can he that is in Christ Jesus be cast into flames?... He that has Christ [as] his substitute is beyond all fear of hell. He can look down into that dread abyss, and feel that there is not a burning coal there for him, and that whoever may perish, yet he, being in Christ Jesus, can never die (C. H. Spurgeon, “The Water of Life,” The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Pilgrim Publications, 1979 reprint, vol. XIII, p. 509).

Jesus said,

“The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14).

That is why I ask you to come to Christ. Jesus calls to you this morning, saying,

“If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink”
      (John 7:37).

Come to Jesus! He will satisfy your thirst. He will give you life. He will cleanse your filth. He will put out the fire of God’s wrath.

“If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink”
      (John 7:37).

I implore you - come to Christ. Come unto Him and drink, your sins will be cleansed, and you will live forever!

(END OF SERMON)
You can read Dr. Hymers' sermons each week on the Internet
at www.realconversion.com. Click on "Sermon Manuscripts."

Scripture Read Before the Sermon by Dr. Kreighton L. Chan: John 7:37-39.
Solo Sung Before the Sermon by Mr. Benjamin Kincaid Griffith:
“I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” (by Horatius Bonar, 1808-1889)/
“Only Jesus Can Satisfy Your Soul” (by Lanny Wolfe, 1971).