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 4:14) KJV
What is this living water? And if Jesus said that there is such a thing as living water, does that mean that there is dead water? These are the kinds of things that I contemplate, it helps to ease my mind. This puts me in good company I believe, as Isaiah seems to have thought the same thing.
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.
(Isaiah 26:3) KJV
One of the things that I truly love about the Bible is the way that it explains itself. When you find a passage, like this one of the conversation that Jesus had with the Samaritan woman, and it raises an intriguing idea like that of living water, diligent study will find out the other parts of the Bible that help to bring you to its full understanding. So if the living water wells up in the person who believes in Jesus Christ, then what? What does it do? We turn to another passage in the Gospel of John for help understanding it.
In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
(John 7:37-38) KJV
So now I know that the stream of living water will come out of my belly. Now, technically speaking, there isn’t actually a stream of water coming out of my belly, and so therefore this is a figure of speech that is being used as a picture of something else. The passage goes on to explain this too, and what it tells us is that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the believer enables the believer to share the gospel of Jesus Christ like a river of living water. However, the practical manifestation of this is not actual water coming out of an actual belly, but an out-flowing of the Spirit of God through words and deeds.
There is a point to this, trust me.
I believe that the Bible gives us an accurate account of the physics of creation, the history of the world to the present time, and what is going to take place in the future. Because of this some people ask me if I think the Bible should be taken literally. Unfortunately there is not a simple yes/no answer. I believe that the literal parts should be taken literally, but the figurative parts should not. So how do we know what parts of the Bible are literal and which are figurative?
We have to examine the context of the passage to see if it is referring to or describing an actual physical phenomenon. I know that Jesus in today’s passage is speaking figuratively because there isn’t a stream of water coming out of my belly. I also know that when God said, “Let there be light,” the physical conditions necessary to cause light to appear were present, and so this is literal.
We can test the Bible against itself, and we can test the Bible against physical evidence and scientific knowledge. This is also how we can test whether scientific knowledge is real or imaginary.
Is science describing something that, interpreted correctly, can be accounted for by the Bible? This again should cause us to examine the evidence carefully, not what science says about the evidence, but we should be examining the evidence for ourselves.
Matty (Headwind) 