Drink Deeply

Well, brethren, one of the things that has always blown me away on my trips over to Nigeria, and even honestly on this most recent trip to South Africa, is the sheer magnitude of the desert portions of the African continent. You know, flying into South Africa this last time, I had a chance to fly over to Kalahari, coming into Namibia, and then down into South Africa. We flew over a portion of that. But when Mr. Moody and I fly into Amsterdam as our connection, the second leg of our flight from the Netherlands is about a seven-hour flight. So you pick it up in Amsterdam, you jump on the plane from Amsterdam, it's about seven hours from there to Lagos. And so it's about a straight shot, too. It's about a straight shot down from Amsterdam to Lagos. And along that flight route, you pick up the Sahara Desert through almost the dead center of the country of Algeria. And so you come into the northern part of the country of Algeria, you almost just split it right down the middle, and then they thread the needle between the boundaries and borders of Mali and Niger. And so they kind of thread that as they go into Nigeria. But what has always blown me away is from the point you cross the Mediterranean and get into what you would call an inhabited coastline of Algeria and actually hit what we would call desert, it's about a four-hour flight before you hit another area that has an inhabited area at all. It's about four hours.

The rest of that time, you were flying over the Sahara Desert. And as you look down from the window—I used to look down from the window quite a bit—you'll see the occasional road, you'll see the occasional path. Sometimes you'll see cities and towns where there's oasaces and things, and people have managed to build up around those areas. But by and large, it's not terribly largely developed throughout the center of Algeria. It's mostly just sand dunes and sand for miles and miles. It's unfortunate, you know, as it goes with a lot of things, you start getting used to the view, and last few trips the window's been down and I've just slept. You know, it's kind of sad to think about it. I used to look at it just, oh, this arrow! How cool is it? You know, as time goes on, you reach that point, I suppose. But, you know, as you look down, it is a massive desert. It's a massive, massive desert. I did a quick little blip because I was curious how big it really was. There's actually more than three million square miles of sand covering that northern portion of the continent of Africa, and it's a landmass, the Sahara, that's actually larger and greater in size than the entirety of the continental U.S. You could take the continental U.S. and fit it in the Sahara desert. And it's all desert. It's all desert. Once a year, there's a group of people who are insane, and they descend on the country of Morocco for a race called the Marathon Disables.

Some of you might have heard of the Marathon Disables. It's a self-supported, 156-mile foot race over a six-day period through some of the most inhospitable terrain in the world.

Temperatures can exceed 122 degrees Fahrenheit, and the brutal sand and wind and sun have resulted in this race being dubbed the toughest foot race on Earth. Because it's self-supported, you carry all your own supplies. You carry them all on your back for six days. The only thing that is provided for you is water. That is the only thing that they provide you at checkpoints along the route. So they give you enough for what you would need for the day, and then they get you when you hit the next checkpoint. They'll give you some more. Annually, they've said that the race provides runners and race staff with 43,000 gallons of water in a seven-day period. It's a six-day race, but they take seven days to make it happen. There's one day in there after a really long run where they give them the day off, which is probably wise. You know, as you imagine what they're putting up with and what they're going through. In 1994, there was a gentleman by the name of Mauro Presperi. He was an Italian runner who signed up to participate in the marathon. Running with a friend, he'd gone through the first couple of days of the race, about 60 miles by the third day of the race. Then, on the fourth day of the marathon, on the longest leg of the race, conditions in the Sahara got really, really ugly all of a sudden. High temperatures that day caused the development of several smaller windstorms that began to kind of swirl together and become this massive sandstorm. Mauro was actually concerned that if he stopped and took shelter, that he would actually be buried by the sand. He would actually be completely buried by the sand. So, he continued to run for eight hours through this sandstorm. But he was convinced, as he ran, that he could see the markings of the trail of the marathon. And so, he kept going because, in his mind, if I stop, I'm going to end up under the sand. So, I need to keep going. When the storm had finally subsided, he realized he couldn't see any of the trail markers of the marathon. So, he climbed up to a dune, got him a little bit of higher vantage to see if he could see some of the trail or maybe some other runners. And he realized he was out there all by himself in the middle of the Sahara Desert. He was almost out of water.

There were no race stations to resupply. No checkpoints anywhere to get that next little bit of water that he needed. So, as the daylight hours kind of waned on the first day that he was missing, he saw this low-flying helicopter on the horizon fired one of the flares that was in his pack to try to get their attention. But it was unsuccessful. They weren't able to see him. The next morning, he decided, well, they told us we're supposed to stay in one spot, but nobody really knows where I am.

Nobody knows where I went missing from. So he started walking in search of shade and water in the hopes that he might be able to ride it out until they came and found him. After several hours, he stumbled onto a small mosque that was actually long abandoned out in the desert. It was a shrine that was used by the Bedouins as they would travel through the area. They would stop, and they would worship, and then they would move on. And so he decided that he would stay there in the hopes that someone might, as they go out looking for him, come alongside him here and find him.

Over the contributing days, he managed to eat through his food rations, used up his water entirely, and began drinking, we'll say, recycled water. We'll just leave it at that. He tried to maintain his hydration by sucking on the wet wipes in his pack, like just trying to get the moisture out of the wet wipes in his pack. And he went as far as licking the dew off the rocks in the morning that would show up in the morning, and at this point he was becoming desperate.

He discovered a colony of bats residing in the tower of the mosque, and managed to trap a few, killed and ate them. Birds, insects, whatever he could find to keep himself alive. At one point, he heard a plane flying over the the moss that he was in. He ran out, he tried to signal it with his with his signal mirror, rode out a giant SOS in the sand, started a fire to get to where they could see the fire, hopefully.

And at that moment, another sandstorm slammed into the moss, put the fire out, and completely and totally buried him in the area in sand yet again. Dejected, he used some of the charcoal from the fire to write a message to his family on the wall of the mosque in the event that his body was discovered there. Following morning, he actually was in a better place mentally. He left the shrine, walked for several days in the cooler portions of the day.

During the day, like when it was hot, he'd bury himself in the sand or he'd hide in little cliff clefts and things so that he would try to keep some of the sun off of him a little bit. He said he survived by squeezing the liquid from roots of plants. Like he would find little plants and he would pull them up out of the ground and squeeze the liquid out of them. He would hunt for beetles and snakes and lizards to eat so they could get at least some moisture or some nourishment in some way. So what he did at that point was he set his sights on a mountain range that was in the distance, and he kept walking in the direction of those mountains on the horizon.

On his eighth day in the middle of the Sahara Desert, he stumbled on a small oasis. A little puddle in the ground was all it was. Collapsing next to it, he tried to drink, but his mouth and his throat were so swollen from dehydration that he couldn't swallow. Have you ever been so thirsty it's hard to swallow that first little bit? His mouth and throat were so swollen, he couldn't swallow the first few mouthpools. So he laid next to the puddle with his face in the water, and he sipped just a little bit every hour or so until he could finally take the water down in larger quantities and filled his water container and managed to keep walking.

As he continued to walk, he came across goat droppings, followed the goat droppings, found the goats, and human footprints. He followed those footprints and found a small Tuareg girl tending to the herd of goats that he had followed. He ran towards her, begging for help, and she ran away screaming.

Maro said he turned his signal mirror around and looked at himself for the first time in eight days, and he realized—or at this point had been almost 10 days—and he realized he looked like a skeleton.

His eyes, he said, were so sunken into his head he could barely see them.

They had pulled back so far into his skull he could barely see them. He said his face was pallid and gaunt. His skin was cracked and chapped. The doctors that treated him, actually, said he looked like a tortoise. I'll give you just a picture in your head as you think of like tortoises and what they look like. He said he looked like a tortoise. Thankfully, the young girl returned with her grandmother, who tended to him and brought him to a local village where he was arrested on suspicion of being a spy. Turns out he actually managed to cross the Moroccan border into Algeria, and they thought he was a spy for Morocco. After he was identified, they finally realized what had happened. They got him to a hospital where he was treated. He was found 180 miles off course, 180 miles off course, nine days after he had gotten lost, wandering from the southeast of Morocco into Algeria. He'd lost 33 pounds, 33 pounds, and required 16 liters of intravenous fluids to replenish his water loss. Just for perspective, the human body only holds 42 liters of fluid. He had lost 40 percent of his fluid total, which in most people results in death. I mean, once you get up above about 25-30 percent, it's death. His liver was damaged, caused issues for several months, and he said he experienced leg cramps for more than a year after this was over with, and his kidneys were permanently damaged. His full recovery, back to what would be considered to be some semblance of normal, took two years to recover from the damage that was done in nine days in the desert in northern Africa. He later returned to the Marathon Disables. I told you these people are nuts, but he later returned to the Marathon Disables, and he completed it several times. He actually went back and completed it six times, his most recent, in 2001. But during those nine days in 1994, in the Sahara Desert, Maro nearly died of dehydration. You know, the human body is a magnificent creation. Water makes up about 60 to 70 percent of the weight of the human body. We lose water throughout a variety of bodily functions. Excretion, perspiration, respiration, it all causes water to disappear, and it's approximately two and a half to three liters of fluid each day for normal activities for the average adult. Now, provided we replace those fluids, everything works like it should. By and large, everything works like it should. That said, a number of scientists believe that up to three-quarters of adults in the United States are chronically dehydrated. That they are in a chronic state of dehydration at a fluid deficit, we might say, in their life. Three out of the four people that you talk to, that you interact with, by and large, in a constant state of mild dehydration. So, cheers. Remind me to drink some water. But in a constant state of fluid deficit.

So the first stage of dehydration begins when we lose five to seven percent of our body fluid.

For most folks, that's around three liters of fluid. It's actually not that much. Think about it. It's really not a lot. In this stage, when people lose this three liters of fluid, they start to experience some thirst. As it progresses, they may start to get dizzy. They might experience headaches and some accompanying fatigue that comes along with it. But the next stage of dehydration begins when a person loses between seven and ten percent of their body fluid. For most people, that's four to four and a half liters of fluid. And at this stage, people begin to experience dry, chapped skin. They begin to experience a rapid pulse, and their blood pressure begins to be impacted. As it gets more serious and as it progresses toward the higher end of that, the body begins to recycle every available drop of water. The urine output is reduced, eyes will dry out, vision begins to blur. The blood begins to thicken, with the blood pressure dropping dangerously low as dehydration progresses. The third stage of dehydration, the more severe stage, happens to people when they've lost more than 10 percent of their body fluid. The symptoms become significantly more debilitating. People experience mental confusion, lapses of judgment, poor discernment. They experience really, really low blood pressure, which can result in a loss of consciousness. People stop sweating. And as a result of the drop in blood pressure, this is what Mara was experiencing, the body begins conserving blood to the core and the organ function, which results in the eyes being pulled back into the skull as a result of that loss of blood pressure. But it causes the skin to become pallor, dried out, swollen mucous membranes, and major digestive issues. Some people can experience seizures and fever at this point as well. Between 15 to 25 percent of lost fluid, approximately six to ten and a half liters, the result is typically death. Now, Mara certainly managed to beat those odds, but for most people, more than 25 percent of their fluid lost, it will result in death.

Brethren, we've been created for a need for regular hydration. And if we do not, we die.

We just came through the days of Unleavened Bread. In part of that Holy Day period, we recounted the story of the Exodus account of the Israelites as they left the land of Egypt, as they left their place of bondage, and as they forged a new path. And as we talked about on the last day of Unleavened Bread, as the Red Sea kind of slammed closed behind them, before them, lay new opportunities, new experiences. And it required an extreme need for trust in the God that brought them out of Egypt into this new land. You know, as they left the eastern shore of the Red Sea, the Arabian desert that they were crossing over into, it's a challenging landscape as well. You know, the Arabian desert's nothing to laugh at. It's actually less dry than the Sahara.

The Sahara is actually a drier desert, but it's incredibly challenging regardless. Let's go over to Exodus 15. We'll start today in Exodus 15. You know, it didn't take long for the host of Israel, as we've often commented, to begin experiencing symptoms of dehydration. It didn't take long at all. At this point, when we pick up this account in Exodus 15, Israel had been in the wilderness for three days. It had been three days since they crossed from the Red Sea over. Exodus 15, we'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 22. Exodus 15 and verse 22. So three days into this journey, this is where we're at at this point in time, three days into since the Red Sea is closed and they've moved across, verse 22, Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea, and then they went out into the wilderness of Shere, and they went three days into the wilderness, and notice what it says. It says, they found no water. They found no water. Now when they came to Morah, they could not drink the waters of Morah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Morah.

And the people complained against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?

So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he cast it into the water, so waters were made sweet. There he made a statute and an ordinance for them, and there he tested them. You know, in Morah, they discovered this oasis of water that was present, an area that had water that could be drunk, but the water was bitter, and they weren't able to, you know, it wasn't palatable, they weren't able to drink that water. And so what we see is that the host begins to complain against Moses, you know, three days into a march through the desert, no water to this point. Now water! There's hope! Oh, but it's bitter. It's bitter, and we can't drink it. And so suddenly humanity takes over. Their lack of trust, their lack of faith in God is then covered by their humanity. Now it's not uncommon when humanity takes the wheel, they start asking, what are we going to drink? Moses were thirsty! Moses were dying! What are we going to drink? You know, I think sometimes we read this, and we don't realize this is three days they've been marching through the wilderness with no water.

Any volunteers? Three days with no water marching through hot deserts?

Most of us would go, no thank you. And so they are. Their humanity is taking over here because they're scared. They're afraid because they're not sure what they're going to drink.

Moses cried out to God. God showed him the tree that they could throw into the waters, and the waters at that point were made sweet. Now you can you imagine those first few Israelites?

We could drink this water and then everybody, right, starts getting their drinks. They're able to then drink deeply of that water. The people, the livestock, all that were with them at that point were able to drink deeply of this water. Verse 25 continues, kind of the second half of verse 25, says, there he made a statute and an ordinance for them, and there he tested them and said, if you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight, if you give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I brought onto the Egyptians, for I am the Lord who heals you. God told his people, if you listen, if you obey, if you diligently heed my word and do what is right, God says, I will take care of you. I will take care of you. I will provide for you. All you have to do is trust me and follow my words. Verse 27, we see God wisely, gives them an opportunity to recharge. Verse 27, they came to Elim, and in Elim there were 12 wells of water and 70 palm trees, and so they camped there by the waters in the shade with ample water. They could, they could water themselves, they could water the livestock, they could store water in whatever containers they had to then be able to take it on the next leg of their journey. We're not going to go through the entirety of the Exodus account today. I mean, as we've read through this and as we've looked at this, you're familiar with this account. You're probably also familiar with the rule of threes when it comes to survival. The rule of threes, there's certainly exceptions to the rule, so to speak, but the idea is you can survive three minutes without oxygen, you can survive three days without water, and you can survive three weeks without food, roughly, right? There are certain priorities when it comes to survival. Water is a major priority. Oxygen, a major priority. Shelter, a priority. You know, these things are important, and then food you can make it three weeks without, as needed. Certainly some can go longer than that, right? But as you read the account of the Israelites in Exodus, I think it's really interesting. What's the next complaint that's recorded?

A month after they left Egypt, roughly three weeks after they crossed the Red Sea, what's the next thing we see them say? Moses, we're hungry. We're hungry. First was, I'm thirsty. Now it's, we're hungry. Three days without water, three weeks without food, before you start really noticing it, and it really being an issue. God miraculously provides His people with food. He gives them manna, this small coriander seed-like substance. It tasted like wafers with honey.

He instructed His people to gather it every morning. When the dew would settle in from the desert overnight, it would settle in, and it would be left. Remember the dew that Maro was licking off the rocks? Well, when that dew evaporated in the day, manna was left behind. This little coriander-like seed, this white little thing that was left behind. And every morning, God told them they needed to go out and they needed to gather it, except for the Sabbath. They were to leave none of it overnight.

None of it was to be left overnight, which meant the next morning, God's expectation, was that they were going to go back out and gather it again. Those that tried to hang on to it, it bred worms, it rotted, it got gross, and they realized, no, God meant it. Every single day, He wants me to go out and collect this manna. He wants me to go out and collect this manna, except for the Sabbath, because on Friday, He's going to give me a double batch. And that isn't going to stink the next morning. Why did God have them do it daily? Why did He have them go out and do it daily?

There's a lot of reasons why. One of the reasons is they could ensure that He weren't stockpiling it, grabbing loads and loads and loads of it and jamming it in a jar somewhere, and then being like, ah, I don't need God! I got manna in a jar! Check it out! I don't need Him! I got moon stuff! I'm good! They couldn't create a market for it and sell it to one another.

They had to rely on God. They had no choice but to rely on God and trust on God, because each and every day, He was providing their daily need. In the evening, God gave them quail, taking care of their needs in a miraculous fashion. Let's go over to Exodus 17. Skip just forward a chapter here into Exodus 17. Again, as we mentioned, you know the Arabian Desert? It's not as dry as the Sahara, but it's still really dry. It's like, you know, somebody asks you, like, how hot is 50 degrees Celsius? I don't know. The answer is hot. Like, I can't tell you how hot, but it's hot, okay, comparatively. This is not something where, you know, it's, you know, measures of dryness. It's still a desert. It's still miserably dry compared to the place we live, right? But water is going to be an issue that we see come up regularly. This is an issue that we see come up a lot. And so at each place where they could stop to get water, you can be sure. They filled every container. They could get their hands on. They let their livestock drink. They made sure they were filled as much as possible. And as the stores of water began to run dry, the panic in the people began to rise. As they dipped that ladle into that jar and realized, ooh, the ladle hit the bottom and it's not full. We got maybe a day's worth of water left. Maybe.

Maybe a half a day at best. And when it was gone, it was gone. And when it was gone for a few days, bad things started happening. Just as you might imagine, if all of the water in the United States got turned off for two or three days and you couldn't purchase it in a store, bad things began to happen. When a person gets dehydrated, they get tired. They get fatigued. They might begin to get light-headed and dizzy. But as a person gets increasingly more dehydrated, as we mentioned earlier, their pulse increases. They begin to lose vision. Sometimes they can actually be temporarily blinded as a result of extreme dehydration because of the precipitous drop in blood pressure.

As it progresses further, they can become incapacitated. They can experience mental confusion, significant lapses in judgment. They can even have seizures and death. Exodus 17 in verse 1 says, "...then all the congregation of the children of Israel set out on their journey from the wilderness of sin according to the commandment of the Lord, and they camped in Rephidim." But notice what it says. There was no water for the people to drink. I think they mentioned this purposefully because this is letting us know they were out of water. They didn't have it in jars. They didn't have it camped out necessarily. They were out of water at this point. And it's becoming enough of a concern that it was worth mentioning because, as you can see, it created a situation.

It goes on in verse 2, "...therefore people contended with Moses and said, Give us water that we may drink. Moses said to them, Why do you contend with me? Why do you tempt the Lord? The people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses and said, Why is it that you've brought us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children in our livestock with thirst? And so Moses cried out to the Lord, saying, What shall I do with this people?

He says, They're almost ready to stone me." I want to pause there for a second because this is not a situation in which Israel is saying, like, Hey, Moses, we're kind of thirsty.

We're past that. We're well past we're kind of thirsty. At this point, they're out of water.

It's possible that they've been out of water for a few days, and the people demand Moses provide them with water. Moses says, Why are you talking to me about it? No, let me just dig into my backpack for my portable well. Why are you talking to me? He goes, I have a well in my back pocket. What do you want me to do? See if there's something that I can give you. He says, What do you want me to do about it? But he also asked some very important question. He says, Why are you trying God? Are you trying God? Why are you putting him to the test? You know that he'll provide for you. You know that he'll take care of your needs. Trust him, and he will provide. Israel continues to get increasingly agitated. They continue to accuse Moses of bringing them out to kill them and their children and their livestock from thirst to the point that Moses says, They're about ready to pick up rocks and kill me. Like it reached that level. This isn't slight complaint about being thirsty. This is, we're about to kill a guy. Like that's how serious this got. Verse 5, the Lord said to Moses, Go on before the people, take with you some of the elders of Israel, also take in your hand your rod with which you struck the river and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock in Orib, and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it so the people may drink.

Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel, and so he called the name of the place, Masah and Meribah, because of the contention of the children of Israel and because they tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not? God provides Moses with the method to bring water from the rock. You know, God certainly provided it to his people. He told him to strike the rock, water would come out of it. The people of Israel then could drink. But how did Israel test God at Meribah? They questioned whether he was with them or not. Has he brought us out into the desert and forsaken us? Has he brought us out here to die? Israel let their humanity and their immediate needs get in the way of their faith and their trust in the moment of an incredibly challenging circumstance. But what we see from Scripture is water did in fact come from the rock and the people of Israel drank. They were hydrated and they lived. They were hydrated and they lived.

Let's go to 1 Corinthians 10. 1 Corinthians 10. We turned here a few times during the days of Unleavened Bread. The Apostle Paul was someone who was well versed in the history of Israel.

He was somebody who studied under Gamaliel, who was the kind of rabbi that was quoted for centuries beyond when he had lived. But he was quoted continually as a prominent Jewish teacher.

After Paul's conversion and after Christ through his Spirit connected a number of the things that Paul understood from his Jewish past to what God was really doing and really gave him an understanding of these things, he was able to put them together in a way that we're able to continue to benefit from today. You know, we're able to continue to see these things and to understand what it is that God was doing. 1 Corinthians 10 and we'll begin in verse 1. Again, we've gone through this recently with the Holy Days, but I think it's worth reviewing here today as we step away from these Holy Days into this desert, so to speak, as we follow the journey of the people of Israel in that way. 1 Corinthians 10 and verse 1, Paul writes, Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all of our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. And notice it says, they all ate the same spiritual food, they all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. Paul is harkening directly back to these events. He's taking their attention and pushing it back to something they would recognize. He ties this concept to this account from the wilderness. Their desperate need for water to Jesus Christ, the Word who accompanied them along their journey. In that sense, the rock is a type of Jesus Christ, struck once and pouring out its life-giving water to the people. The next time this happens, the next time we see a reference in Scripture is in Numbers 20. You don't need to turn there. You can if you'd like, but in Numbers 20, Moses was instructed this time to speak with the rock. He was instructed to speak with the rock, and the rock would yield its water. But what we see Moses do is ultimately strike it twice instead, and in an attitude that ultimately cost him the promised land, because he exalted himself in the place of God in the sight of the people, saying, is it up to me to bring water out of this rock? You know, are we to do this for you? What we see is that water still came out of the rock despite him striking it. The people of Israel, their livestock drank, but Moses would lose out on the promised land as a result of his actions. Throughout the wilderness wanderings, God's desire for his people was for them to turn to him and to express to him their need, to ask him in full faith and full trust and full assurance for the provision that he had promised them.

But as we often see in most circumstances, when the water ran out, humanity took over. When the water ran out, humanity took over. They began to experience issues with fatigue. They began to experience issues with their vision. They began to experience lapses and judgment. They were experiencing at that time the symptoms of a very real physical dehydration, but they were also experiencing the symptoms of spiritual dehydration. They were reaching a point that all God wanted for his people to do was to drink deep, both physically and spiritually, of the rock that accompanied them.

In John 4—I'm going to turn over to John 4—Christ speaks to the woman at the well in John 4. John 4 has the opportunity to pass through Samaria, and he has an opportunity to speak to the woman at the well in John 4, verse 1. It says, Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John—it's as though Jesus himself did not baptize but his disciples—he left Judea and departed again to Galilee, but he needed to go through Samaria. So he came to a city of Samaria, which was called Sakhar, through the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now, Jacob's well was there. This is the well that Jacob dug with his own hands. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, therefore, being wearied from his journey, sat thus by the well. It says it was about the sixth hour. So, you know, one of the things that's interesting as we read the Gospel accounts, Jesus managed the attention from the Jewish officials and the Roman officials well. There were times where he would get a little more known and times when he would—like things were progressing a little quick and he'd go, hmm, time to leave this area for a little while, and he'd go over here, and then he'd kind of get things going a little bit over here and go, oh, time to—time to head over here now. The Romans are over here, or the Jews are over here, or these folks are over here, and I'm just going to kind of bounce from where I need to go to where I need to go to do what I need to do before all of the attention is drawn to the point that the plan is fulfilled. And so what we see is him do just that. He had essentially gotten a little more attention in Judea at that point because he was baptizing a number more than John was, and as a result he left and departed through Samaria to get there. So wearied from the trip, tired from the heat of the noonday sun, he sits down at Jacob's well. Verse 7, a woman of Samaria came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, give me a drink, for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. We know Christ at this point, he's thirsty. It's not real clear as to how long it had been since he last had a drink of water, but he was wearied from the trip. He was thirsty, and so he stopped by Jacob's well for a drink. He has a bit of a back and forth with the woman, who's a Samaritan, again, which we know from scriptures an uncommon thing, since the Jews have very little to do with Samaritans, not to mention she was a woman. So it was a really uncommon conversation to be having at this point. Verse 9, the woman of Samaria said to him, how is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Notice Christ's words. He answered, and he said to her, if you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock? Christ answered and said to her, whoever drinks this water from Jacob's well, whoever drinks this water will thirst again.

But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water that I may not thirst nor come here to draw. The word thirst that's used here in the Greek is dipsau. It's G1372, and it means to suffer from thirst. It means to suffer from thirst. So in the sense of the Greek word, it's not talking about being mildly thirsty, like I'm a little thirsty. It's like it's reaching a point where you're like, I need some water.

Like you can you can live with, okay, I'm maybe a little bit thirsty, but yeah, I'll be fine.

No, this is like I need some water. It's speaking about being parched, desiring a drink of water beyond what is normal. We realize as we look at this account, Christ, he's speaking figuratively, but she's hearing him physically. I mean, she's hearing him thinking he's talking about regular water. You know, she's loving this idea. What do you mean? I can get water. I don't have to come back to this well every day. Please give me that water. You got to tap somewhere? That's fantastic. You know, this is great. You know, provide for me these things. But ultimately, what we see is that he's speaking figuratively while she's only hearing him physically.

She's only hearing him physically. His point was that if she knew the rock who was before her, she would drink deeply of the water, which he would provide. You know, for thirst to be noticed, a person has to already be on the road toward fluid deficiency. Again, most people, 75% of the population of the U.S., they're already living in chronic dehydration, meaning they're already fluid deficient. It might take a little more than just that to reach the point of suffering from thirst, to reach the point of feeling parched. So when we talk about the need for hydration, I want you to picture something. Picture a hot day. You've been working outside for a few hours, maybe not drinking water like you should. You're sweating hard. Your mouth is dry. Maybe you're starting to get a little bit lightheaded and you realize, I am thirsty. I need some water.

At that moment, you're just now beginning to suffer from thirst. That's thirsty in the Greek. You're just getting to that point. Now imagine for a minute you go just a couple more hours without water, and then imagine the soothing comfort and sweetness of that big old gulp of cold water that you take after spending all that time out there. That's what we're talking about here. John 7 and verse 37. A few pages over. John 7 and verse 37. John 7 verse 37 says, on the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and he cried out saying, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

He who believes in me, as the Scriptures has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. But this he spoke concerning the Spirit of whom those believing in him would receive, for the Holy Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified. So we see Scripture explain exactly what he's talking about here. But he did this during a unique time during the Feast of Tabernacles. The priests would descend the steps from the Temple Mount each morning, and they would go down to the Pool of Siloam, where they would fill water from the pool in this golden container.

And then they would, with much rejoicing, trumpets and fanfare and dancing and clapping and all sorts of things, would go from the Pool of Siloam back up the stairs, which was about the distance... so I think we talked about at the Feast, about the distance from, you know, the base to the top part of Misery Ridge.

Actually, it's a significant move from the Pool of Siloam. It's a lot of stairs. But they would go back up those things, rejoicing and singing and clapping and making all this ruckus. And then as part of that celebration, they would pour that water out with another bowl containing wine over the altar. They would do that every day of the feast. They would do that every day of Sukkot.

And then on the seventh day was the big one brought to the climax of fanfare. You know, this was the big... it was the last time it would be done until the feast next year. So this was a big deal. It was at that moment that Christ said the words that He said.

They're in the process of completing this, and Christ says, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. This particular ceremony was to call to memory the words of Isaiah the prophet in Isaiah 12 and verse 3. Isaiah 12 and verse 3, He says, with joy you shall draw water from the wells of salvation. With joy you shall draw water from the wells of salvation. Again, it was a ceremony that was full of trumpets, singing, shouting, dancing as they rejoiced before God.

It built up to that final day of the feast when Christ said what He said. Let's see what the effects His word had in verse 40. Verse 40 says, therefore many from the crowd when they heard this saying said, truly, this is the prophet. Others said, this is the Christ. And some said, will the Christ come out of Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the seed of David and from the town of Bethlehem where David was? So there was division among the people because of Him. And now some of them wanted to take Him, meaning capture Him, but no one laid hands on Him.

You see, another time which Christ makes it away without being captured. But since the beginning, He was the rock to which Israel had come in thirst. He was there with them in the wilderness. Paul stated it. He'd given them the water of life, and God's desire of His people since the beginning was that they would drink deep from the true wells of salvation that Isaiah had spoken of.

Of Him and of the Holy Spirit, which Christ was speaking. What we see instead is as Israel settles into the cities that God gave them after the Promised Land, what they show up in is cities with physical wells. They didn't dig these wells. They showed up and these wells were already in place. They had the ability to now go daily to those wells for the life-giving water that they needed to survive in the climate of Judea.

You know, even today in places where water is scarce, people have to go to wells or boreholes each day to gather water for cooking, cleaning, washing. Frequently as we go into more rural areas of Nigeria and Ghana, you'll see women walking along the side of the road with huge jugs of water on their heads. And they go down multiple times a day to gather water from the well or from the borehole where they get that water to be able to bring it home so that they can supply their family's needs.

Israel had wells. They had cisterns. But more importantly, Israel had a spring of living water right there. Their God. But as the old adage goes, you can bring a horse to water.

You can't make them drink. You can't make them drink. By the time of Jeremiah, Israel had reached a point where they had largely relied entirely upon themselves. They dug more wells. They turned away from that spring of living water. Jeremiah 2 and verse 13. Jeremiah 2 and verse 13 will see God's words to his people. Jeremiah 2 and verse 13. Jeremiah 2 verse 13 says, I have, when my people have committed two evils. It says, they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and they've hewn themselves cisterns, broken cisterns. They can hold no water.

Throughout the land of Israel, they dug wells in different places, whether it was literal wells or whether it was isles, whether it was other places that they turned to, to be supplied.

A cistern holds water in a time of scarcity. That's what a cistern is for, a well or cistern. It holds water in times of scarcity. Provides a place to look for safety and security during times of drought, perhaps during times when God closed up the heavens and result of their disobedience. But God says in Jeremiah that in doing so, they forsaken him. They forsaken the fountain of living water, the one from whom the water comes, the one who provides the living water to his people.

What we see in Jeremiah is that when Israel got thirsty, they didn't go to God. They went everywhere but God. Figuratively, they drew water from their own wells and their own cisterns.

But what we see is that God desired that they drink deep from the rivers of living water that he provides and that they should do so daily. Brethren, there's no magic pill for dehydration.

There's no medication. There's no treatment. Aside from proper hydration. That is the only way to fix dehydration is to drink water. That's it! There's no magic bullet. There's no pill.

There's no, like, you know, fad. If you're dehydrated, you drink water. It's the only solution. In fact, the best way to prevent dehydration is to stay hydrated. To not let it take place in the first place. Because what happens with dehydration is it makes it harder for you to remain hydrated as time goes on. It remains more difficult. The only way to prevent dehydration is to be regularly hydrated. That's it. The only way to prevent us from reaching a point where we experience or suffer thirst is to ensure that we are taking in as much or slightly more than what we use up each day. From a physical standpoint, that's the only way. But it's interesting in our physical lives, different conditions will dictate different amounts of need. You're not going to need as much water driving your family to a vacation than you would maybe exercising, you know, up a mountain side on that same vacation. You know, your circumstances of life are going to dictate how much you're going to need to drink. But regardless of whether you're driving around or whether you're hiking, if you don't drink water for two to three days to replenish what you lose through your sedentary daily activity, you will go into dehydration.

You absolutely will. And when that happens, we start to feel fatigued. We can experience mental confusion. We can experience poor judgment. We can experience issues with our vision, maybe even at times temporarily blinded. Let it go long enough, ongoing dehydration leads to death.

Brethren, spiritually, it's no different. It's no different. If we are not drinking of that living water daily to replace what we've lost as a part of living this Christian life and this calling day in and day out, we go into a state of deficiency. We end up in a place where we become dehydrated. And with enough deficiency, we get weary. We get spiritually fatigued. Maybe we struggle to continue with our efforts. Our Bible study drops off. Our prayer drops off. And it's in those times, brethren, we have to stop and we have to realize what's happened. We have become dehydrated. We're not spiritually hydrated. In times of additional exertion, in times of really great trial, really difficult conditions, life circumstances, things happening, we might need to drink more. We may need to drink more to ensure that we're keeping up with how much is being expended as a result of the conditions that we're in. But brethren, if we continue without drinking from those living waters, spiritually, we start to experience headaches, ongoing fatigue. We can begin to experience confusion. We can experience poor judgment, lack of discernment. We might say something or do something that's out of character because we're spiritually dehydrated. We're in desperate need of that water, of life. And if we don't stop, and if we don't hydrate and continue hydrating to then bring us back to equilibrium, we could experience a loss of vision. We could experience a loss of hope. And we could reach a point similar to Mauro Prosperi, who at one point in his journey decided to just lay down and die. Brethren, when this happens to us spiritually, we are in dangerous, dangerously spiritually dehydrated. Without intervention, we may just.

There is no other solution but to hydrate. There's no other fix. Again, there's no pill. There's no magic bullet. You need a drink of water, desperately, in those circumstances. And there's only one source of hydration that we can obtain. Let's go to Isaiah 44 as we begin to close here today. Isaiah 44. In those circumstances, when we reach those points, we need water. We need to take a drink. Again, from the only source that can truly supply the water that we need. Isaiah 44, and we'll pick it up in verse 1. Isaiah 44 in verse 1 says, Yet here now, O Jacob, my servant, Israel, whom I have chosen, thus says the Lord, who made you and formed you from the womb, who will help you. Fear not, O Jacob, my servant, and you, Jesherun, whom I have chosen. For I will pour water on him who is thirsty. I will pour water on him who is thirsty, and floods on the dry ground. I will pour my spirit on your descendants, my blessing on your offspring. They will spring up among the grass like willows by the watercourses. One will say, I am the Lord's. The other will call himself by the name of Jacob. Another will write with his hand the Lord's and name himself by the name of Israel. Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts.

I am the first. I am the last. Besides me, there is no God. Who can proclaim as I do, then let him declare it and set it in order for me, since I appointed the ancient people. And the things that are coming and shall come, let them show these to them. Do not fear nor be afraid. Have I not told you from that time and declared it? You are my witnesses. Is there a God besides me? Indeed, there is no other rock. There is no other rock. I know, not one. Brethren, God always intended for his people to drink deeply from him, to drink deeply from that rock. And when we experience times of fear, when we experience times of anxiety, when we're maybe experiencing the spiritual lethargy of life, the headaches and the fatigue that comes with the ebbs and the flows of life, when we begin to lose the vision or we begin to experience lapse and judgment, take a drink. Take a drink.

Drink deeply of that cool living water that only God can provide. Let him quench your thirst and let him give you the strength to go on.