Discovering the Fountain of Life: the gospel for the ages (3)

• Posted on sdgale
• in 'CHOP Talk' Blog
• on April 29, 2013
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Adapted from Chapter Nine, “The Vanity of Strength and Beauty” from Making Sanity Out of Vanity: Christian realism in the book of Ecclesiastes by Stanley D. Gale (EP Books, 2011)

Pursuing the Fountain of Life

Finding our pursuit of the fountain of youth a dead end, we now turn our attention to another fountain.  This one is given by God himself—and he tells us how to find it.

Jesus was traveling in a region called Samaria.  It had been long journey.  Jesus was tired.  He sat down beside a well.  Before long a woman came to draw water from the well, as she likely did every day.  This day would change her life.

Jesus asked her for some water.  The Samaritan woman was surprised because the culture didn’t allow for that interaction.  But Jesus said, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” (John 4:10)

The woman was confused.  Here Jesus was asking her for water, but he had nothing to draw water from the well even for himself.  How could he give her water?

That’s when Jesus explains what he means.  “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I 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 4:13-14)

What is Jesus talking about?  Behind his words lay his mission for coming into this world.  In the face of the certainty of death, Jesus came to bring life.  He died on the cross for sinners and was raised to life.  Jesus conquered death.

One of the passages we often hear read at funerals spells it out.  Jesus was talking to a woman named Martha.  Her brother Lazarus had died.  As you might expect, she was heartbroken.  This is what Jesus said to her:

“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25-26)

Jesus is the living water, the fountain of life, from which waters of eternal life flow.  We drink of that living water through faith that believes in Jesus.

The hope of the gospel, God’s message of life found in Jesus, leads us to find hope and life not by attempts to cling to youth but in God. Our efforts to find life and meaning and endurance in youth are misplaced, seeking hope and remedy that will only disappoint.

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah tells something interesting about God and also shows us just how far youth will take us.

“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”  (Isaiah 40:28-31)

The best that youth can offer will not be enough, even if we could recapture it.  The strength of youth may be able to hold the branch to keep from falling to the valley below a bit longer than the aged can, but it’s just a matter of time when that grip will weaken and fail. The mouth of the grave gapes open below all who breathe and none cannot escape its jaws. God offers hope as he directs us away from self-effort of our trying to earn our way to heaven and points us to his Son, Jesus.

True and enduring physical fitness are found not in a personal trainer but in the personal Savior, in whom the harsh reality of death is swallowed up in victory.   Hear the declaration of victory posted by the apostle as he describes the ultimate makeover.

“I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.  For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.  When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”  “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  (1 Corinthians 15:50-57)

That hope for tomorrow transforms the pains and problems of today.  Listen to what the apostle says elsewhere: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”