If Anyone Thirst

October 12, 2008

John 7:37-38

This weekend we celebrate Thanksgiving. We all have so much to be thankful for. We live surrounded by abundance. God has given us this abundance for which we are thankful. Scripture says when we take delight in Him, He gives us the desires of our heart. Consider this story: A very old man lay dying in his bed. In death's doorway, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favorite chocolate chip cookies wafting up the stairs. He gathered his remaining strength and lifted himself from the bed. Leaning against the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with even greater effort forced himself down the stairs, gripping the railing with both hands.

With labored breath, he leaned against the door frame, gazing into the kitchen. Were it not for death's agony, he would have thought himself already in heaven. Here, spread out upon newspapers on the kitchen table were literally hundreds of his favorite chocolate chip cookies. Was it heaven? Or was it one final act of heroic love from his devoted wife, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man?

Mustering one great final effort, he threw himself toward the table. The aged and withered hand, shaking, made its way to a cookie at the edge of the table, when it was suddenly smacked with a spatula by his wife.

Stay out of those, she said, they're for the funeral .

In Experiencing God Day-by-Day, Henry Blackaby talks about The Desires of Your Heart

Take delight in the Lord,

and He will give you your heart’s desires.—Psalm 37:4

Your relationship with God ought to bring you more joy, satisfaction, and pleasure than any other relationship, activity, or material possession you have. Scripture exhorts you to delight yourself in the Lord, finding your greatest pleasure in God and the things dear to His heart.

How can you find pleasure in what God enjoys? Only as you spend time with Him will you begin to take delight in the things God loves. As you spend intimate time with God and allow Him to show you your situation from His perspective, you will begin to see things as God sees them. As you adjust yourself to God, your heart will begin to desire the same things God's heart desires. When you pray, you will find yourself asking for the very things God desires. Matters foremost on God's heart will be preeminent in yours. Your first request in prayer will not be for yourself, but for God's name to be exalted and His kingdom to be extended (Matt. 6:9–10).

Have you been asking God to give you the desires of your heart without first seeking to understand what is on His heart? God places this important requirement for those who pray: that we seek His priorities and make them our own. This great qualifier prevents us from asking out of selfishness. As we find joy in the Lord, we will see what is truly important, and we will long for these things as the Father does.

Our key Scripture this morning speaks of the lavishness of God towards His people. It is taken from John, chapter 7. Please turn to it now and follow along as I read verses 37 and 38:

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, "If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, 'Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water."'

Some images are attractive; some are repulsive. This image is attractive. Most people, I think, would like their heart to be like a deep mountain spring overflowing in rivers of living water. Even before we have a clear idea of what this image is referring to, we yearn for it because it seems to imply fullness and completeness to the point of overflowing. It implies sweet coolness and refreshment. It implies moisture and growth and life. The Bible is full of beautiful imagery. The image of springs or streams is particularly evocative. Listen to Psalm 1: “How blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord.” He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water.” This picture of the tree by a stream is repeated by Jeremiah in chapter 17, verses 7 and 8: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord …. For he will be like a tree planted by the water that extends its roots by a stream … “ The tree planted by the stream is an image of spiritual health, of fruitfulness. But Jesus is not merely a poet evoking emotions by images. He is that, but much more. These very evocative words refer to something real. The words are not meant to make us feel good because of their beauty and their associations. They are meant to put us in touch with something solid and powerful and living. Jesus is offering a very desirable experience, but he is offering it only as the result of some real, personal dealings between us and him. It is real because He is as real today as he was two thousand years ago, as real as the person next to you. No experience you have or will have is of any value whatever if it doesn't have this real and living Jesus. Our experience is essential, but it will slip through our fingers and disappear if we focus on the experience instead of on Jesus. So in thinking about this text we must talk about our experience, but it will be all in vain if Jesus doesn't shine through as distinct and powerful and beautiful over all. We need to focus on the Living Water, not just the fruitful tree.

The feast referred to in verse 37 is the Jewish feast of Tabernacles or feast of booths, as we learned last week from 7:2. The origin of the feast is described in Leviticus 23. Moses says,

You shall dwell in booths (or tabernacles) for seven days, and all that are native in Israel shall dwell in booths, that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.(vs 42-43)

God ordained that his people bring to mind in yearly feasts the great things he had done for them when he delivered them out of bondage in Egypt. God's purpose in bringing the people out of Egypt and through the wilderness was to show his power and his love for Israel, so that she would always cleave to him and trust him and obey him. The feast of booths reminded the people of this trek through the wilderness and how God miraculously provided all their needs.

One of the needs God had provided was water. In Exodus 17 Moses tells us how the people, soon after their escape from Egypt, moved south from the wilderness of Sin and camped at Rephidim. There was no water there and so, instead of trusting God who had split the sea for them, "the people thirsted there for water and murmured against Moses" (17:3). So Moses cried to the Lord, and God caused water to come out of a rock.

According to verse 14, Jesus had gone up to the temple about the middle of the feast. Now it was the last great day of the feast as he stands up to shout the words of our text, "If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink." Whether the people at the feast grasped the full significance of this or not, we can see in John's gospel that Jesus saw himself as the fulfillment of the Jewish feasts. He was the fulfillment in the sense that the saving power and grace of God which the Jews celebrated were now present and available in Jesus. The longing for God and for the arrival of his kingdom, kept alive by the recurring feasts, need not be a mere longing any more. God had now drawn near in his Son, and he offered his saving rule to all who would submit. The waiting was over. As Jesus said, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel" (Mark 1:15).

Everything in the Old Testament had pointed forward to a time of fulfillment. Jesus is that fulfillment. John shows Jesus now as a replacement and fulfillment of both the tabernacle and the temple. John 1:14, "The Word became flesh and tented (or tabernacled) among us." And in John 2:19 Jesus says, referring to his own body, but also alluding to the Jerusalem temple, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." We no longer meet God at the tabernacle or the temple. We meet him in Jesus.

Another example of how Jesus fulfills the Old Testament is John 3:14, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." Whatever health and hope and salvation was offered in the Old Testament through ceremonies and symbols and sacrifices are now offered through the death of Jesus Christ. They were all foreshadowing what was to come; now Jesus is here, and the shadows are swallowed up in his light. Light, water, bread – all – beautiful images of Jesus’ sustaining power. Last month, in John 6, we heard the Jews ask Jesus for a sign like Moses gave to Israel in the wilderness, namely, the miraculous manna (6:30). Jesus answers, Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven . . . I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger. (6:32, 35)

Again Jesus fulfills the Old Testament by offering himself as all the sustenance we need, and more, than was ever had in the Old Testament era.

So when we hear Jesus cry out at the feast of booths, "If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink," we understand him to mean, "If you are thirsty for God, if you are longing for the consolation of Israel (Luke 2:25), if you are eagerly looking for the kingdom of God (Luke 23:51), for deliverance from sin and oppression (Rom 6:23), then no longer look back to the days of old, and don't look forward to the future, just look to me. In me all the past is summed up, and in me the future hope has arrived. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink." O, how important it is for us to know who it is from whom we drink! All the drinking in the world will not satisfy us if we do not see Jesus Christ as our fountainhead. The water he gives may taste bland to those who do not see Jesus as the one who dominates all of history. All of history exists for the sake of Jesus; the Bible is His story.

Now perhaps we are ready to hear the words of Jesus as the provider of living water: "If any one thirst, let him come." The invitation is universal, and yet it is conditional. There are no ethnic, intellectual, or social qualifications for drinking at Jesus' fountain. The invitation goes out to all. Everyone in this room has a personal invitation from Jesus to come to him and drink. There is only one condition! Did you hear it? Listen to the verse again: “If anyone thirsts, let him come.” What is the condition for drinking at the well of living water? Yes! You have to be thirsty.

Thirst is a powerful symbol. Physical thirst is the most powerful drive known to man. Human beings can go for days and weeks without the satisfaction of other drives. We can go without food, without comfort, without happiness for weeks, and still survive. But no one can live very long without water. When you are thirsty — truly, searingly thirsty — that drive to find water becomes a singleminded, desperate, driving obsession. You can think of nothing but how to satisfy that thirst.

That is the symbol Jesus uses here. If you feel driven, restless, thirsty, desperate for satisfaction in your life, then He invites you: "Come unto me and drink, and I will give you the Spirit, I will empower you and give you significance, I will satisfy your thirst."

Often, the hardest work is not getting men saved but getting them lost. To put it another way, the hardest thing is not to satisfy their thirst but to make them feel thirsty for God. All men thirst. But not all thirst for God. We are the only species of God's creation afflicted and blessed with chronic longing. Dolphins are content to frolic in the sea, dogs are content to lie in the sun, frogs are content to bump their bellies from pond to pond. But man is not content. He is afflicted with chronic restlessness. Everything we set our hand to gets old. We fight without success against an epidemic of boredom. Fad after fad, fashion after fashion, challenge after challenge leave us thirsty in the end. Why?

We are afflicted and blessed with a chronic restlessness, an insatiable soul-thirst. Why? That we might keep looking until we find Christ. And that having found him we might be turned back to him again and again when we taste of other springs and find them bitter. We were made for God. The taste buds of our souls were made to relish fellowship with the Son of God. But we have become sinners, and the fundamental meaning of sin is thirsting for things other than God. Our sinful nature is a condition of diseased spiritual taste buds. Therefore, the prerequisite for coming to Christ and finding joy in him is renewal of our spiritual taste buds. Paul said, "The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him" (1 Corinthians 2:14). The unspiritual man looks at a believer who delights in drawing near to Christ in worship, prayer, study, and witness, and all he can see is a fool or a hypocrite. He cannot imagine that any of those things is a delight. He has no thirst for Christ, and so the invitation of Jesus is a dead issue.

But God is gracious. He frustrates the human race again and again. He causes every wreath to wither, every gold cup to tarnish, every muscle to sag, every face to wrinkle, every sexual exploit to go sour, every sin to sting, until we have put him off too long. He wants us for himself. He wants everything but himself to grow dim in our eyes. He offers to heal our spiritual taste buds. And if you feel the slightest desire for Christ this morning, then you can know that God is doing surgery on the diseased taste buds of your soul so that you will thirst for Jesus. You may only feel a desire to thirst. That is the start of thirst for God. Do not let it die. Fan it into a flame with earnest pleadings for God's kindling mercy. Let nothing stand in your way. As we already noticed, there is only one condition: earnest desire for what Jesus has to give. Thirst! The very last chapter of our Bibles leaves this merciful invitation ringing in our ears:

The Spirit and the Bride say, "Come!" And let him who hears say, "Come!" And let him who is thirsty come, let him who desires take the water of life without price.

You need no money and no moral track record. You only need genuine desire. "Let him who desires take the water of life without price." May God be gracious to everyone here to heal the tongues of our soul and make us taste the difference between the sweet poison the world offers and living water.

Let us assume that God has done this work in you already. What now does it mean to come and drink? "If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink." Jesus is not with us in a visible or tangible way. Therefore, he cannot be approached geographically, as he could be when on the earth. Coming to Jesus must be an act of the heart. But what is this movement of the heart? What is this soul-drinking? We say sometimes as we stand before some scene of beauty that we are drinking it in; or changing the metaphor slightly, we say our eyes are feasting on it. What do we mean? We mean that we have put ourselves in a position to behold the beauty; then we have said, "Yes," to all that it is; we have not disputed the beauty or called it unreal. We affirm its worth, and we give ourselves up to it to be moved by it. In that way we drink in the scene.

So it is with Jesus. We first put ourselves in a position to behold him clearly. Since he is not here this is usually done through his Word, whether read in the Bible, heard in a sermon, or seen in a life. Jesus said, "The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life" (John 6:63). We meet the life-giving Jesus today in his Word, and when he calls us to come and drink, it is his words to which we come. They carry the living water. Then when our gaze is fixed on his Word, we say, "Yes," to all that it is. We do not dispute its beauty or call it unreal. We affirm its worth, and we give ourselves to it unreservedly to be moved by it because we trust its beauty.. We rest in the certainty that here is truth that will not leave us empty.

What Jesus means by drinking is the same thing he means by believing or trusting. After he says, "Come to me and drink," in verse 37, he immediately says, "He who believes in me." He could have said, "He who drinks from me." The clearest evidence for this is found in John 6:35, where Jesus says, "He who believes in me shall never thirst." Therefore, the essence of drinking the Word of Jesus is trusting it, banking on it. But the reverse is true, too. The essence of believing in Jesus is finding in him the satisfaction of our deepest soul-thirst. Drinking is believing; believing is drinking.

But now notice the difference between John 6:35 and our text. John 6:35 promises that if we believe in Jesus, we will never thirst. It focuses on our satisfaction and contentment. It says that if we drink from the fountain of Jesus' promises, our cup will always be full to the brim. We will not feel the need to fill up the cup of our need with some worldly pleasure or achievement. But our text says more. Look at the promise at the end of our key passage for today. "If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, 'Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.'" The promise is not only that we will be satisfied, but that we will be satisfying. He promises not only that our cup will be full, but also that it will be overflowing for others. In drinking from Jesus we become not merely a full receptacle, but a spring or a fountain or a river. Jesus promises that if we drink him into our hearts, he will flow out from us with rivers of living water so those around us will benefit from our overflow.

There are three things we need to see today’s Scripture passage Not only our drinking in Christ by a faith which savors his promises, and not only our ceasing to thirst as we gain full satisfaction, but also our overflowing with the rivers of blessing for others. The overflow of my heart for the good of others is an essential part of my contentment. My deepest soul-thirst is not just to be a cold cup of water (Matt 10:42) but to be a river. Experience has taught me that the joy I feel as Christ flows into me eventually turns sour if it does not flow out of us in praise to God and love to men. If our hearts are not rivers of love and praise, then all our religiosity will become a brackish pond. Think of those you know who minister out of their overflow of living water. Of them Christ will say, “I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink”(matt 25:35) We’ve spoken a lot lately about our overflow, our commission to go into all the world and make disciples (Matt 28:19-20) so suffice to say, here it is again, “Out of your heart should flow rivers of living water, living water that washes over friends, family, neighbors so they know they’ve been in the presence of the Spirit of God. Just as we are called to be salt and light (Matt 25:13-16), we are called to be rivers of water. Don’t you love the imagery of the Bible?

Everything starts with the imagery of thirst, a soul-thirst for Jesus then a drinking in of his promises by faith. Then two things happen in our hearts: first, we sense deep down that we have now discovered the source of lasting and complete joy, and our hearts thirst for more and more of Christ; and second, what we already do know, the water we have so far drunk (to use the words of John 4:14) "becomes in us a spring of water welling up into eternal life." This is Christ's holy magic: when a drop of his water falls on the parched land of our soul, it doesn't make a puddle; it makes a spring. And from the spring there flows a river. And when that river of blessing touches the heart of another person, then, and not until then, do we experience the fullness of joy. Not until then is our deepest thirst quenched. So the sequence is: drink in Christ, pour Christ out, and never thirst again.

Here is a story received on-line which illustrates this pouring out of living water: A young man had been to Wednesday Night Bible Study.

The Pastor had shared about listening to God and obeying the Lord's voice

The young man couldn't help but wonder 'Does God still speak to people?'

After service, he went out with some friends for coffee and pie and they discussed the message. Several different ones talked about bow God had led them in different ways.

It was about ten o'clock when the young man started

driving home. Sitting in his car, he just began. to pray, 'God If you still speak to people, speak to me. I will listen. I will do my best to obey.'

As he drove down the main street of his-town, he had the strangest thought to stop and buy a gallon of milk.

He shook his head and said out loud, 'God is that you?' He didn't get a -reply and started on toward home.

But again, the thought, buy a gallon of milk.

The young man thought about Samuel and he didn't recognize the voice of God, and how little Samuel ran to Eli.

“Okay, God, in case that is you, I will buy the milk.’ It didn’t seem like too hard a test of obedience. He could always use the milk He stopped and purchased the gallon of milk and started off toward home

As he passed Seventh Street, he again felt the urge, 'Turn Down that street.'

This is crazy he thought, and drove on past the intersection.

Again, he felt that he should turn down Seventh Street

At the next intersection, he turned back and headed down Seventh.

Half jokingly, he said out loud,

'Okay, God, I will:

He drove several blocks, when suddenly, he felt like he should stop He pulled over to the curb and looked around. He was in a semi- commercial area of town. It wasn't the best but it wasn't the worst of neighborhoods either. The businesses were closed and most of the houses looked dark like the people were already in bed.

Again, he sensed something, 'Go and give the milk to the people in the house across the street.' The young man looked at the house. It was dark and it looked like the people were either gone or they were already asleep. He started to open the door and then sat back in the car seat.

'Lord, this is insane. Those people are asleep and if I wake them up, they are going to be mad and I will look stupid: Again, he felt like be should go and give the milk.

Finally, he opened the door, 'Okay God, If this is you, I will go to the door and I will give them the milk. If you want me to look like a crazy person, okay I want to be obedient I guess that will count for something, but if they don't answer right away, I am out of here.'

He walked across the street and rang the bell. He could hear some noise inside. A man's voice yelled out, 'Who is it? What do you want?' Then the door owed before the young man could get away.

The man was standing there In his jeans and T-shirt. He looked like he just got out of bed. He had a strange look on his face and he didn't seem too happy to have some stranger standing on his doorstep. 'What is it?'

The young man thrust out the gallon of milk, 'Here I brought this to you.' The man took the milk and rushed down a hallway.

Then from down the hall came a woman carrying the milk toward the kitchen. The man was following her holding a baby. The baby was crying. The man had tears streaming down his face.

The man began speaking and half crying, 'Were just praying. We had some big bills this month and we ran out of money. We didn't have any milk for our baby. I was just praying and asking God to show me how to get some milk'

His wife in the kitchen yelled out, I asked Hirn to send an Angel with some. Are you an Angel?'

The young man reached into his wallet and pulled out all the money he had on him and put in the man's hand. He turned and walked back toward his car and the tears were streaming down his face. He knew that God still answers prayer, and he wa willing to let the grace and love of God flow through him. He was a river of living water.

And now one final comment takes us back to where we began. Lest we be tempted to think of our thirst and our spiritual drinking and our giving as merely an emotional, religious experience triggered by our innate longings and our attraction to some evocative biblical language, John adds these words in verse 39, Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

Do not think that what you receive from Christ by faith and give to others in love is just an emotional experience. It is God the Holy Spirit. It is he that flows in through faith (Galatians 3:2, 5) and flows out through love (Galatians 5:22).

This is a great help to my faith. It adds marrow to the bones of my experience when I think that all the promissory notes of the gospel are backed by the stable currency of divine promises. My prayer for us is that God the Spirit might make us thirsty for Jesus Christ, that He might remove the calluses from the taste buds of our heart, and cause us to drink deep and savor the magnificence of Jesus who fulfills all of history past and embodies all the glorious hopes of the future. Because if the Spirit will do this for us, we have it on the word of Jesus that "out of our hearts will flow rivers of living water." And that is what we crave above all.

If you feel driven, restless, thirsty, desperate for satisfaction in your life, then He invites you: "Come unto me and drink, and I will give you the Spirit, I will empower you and give you significance, I will satisfy your thirst." Will you come?

Can you say as the psalmist said, “As the deer pants for the water .. so my soul thirsts for God.” (Psalm 42:1-2)

As you celebrate Thanksgiving this weekend with your families, remember to express thanks for the thirst God has given you. “For He has satisfied the thirsty soul.” (Ps 107:9) And if you do not thirst for Him, may the cry of your heart be, “I shall seek you earnestly; my soul shall thirst for you, my flesh yearn for you in a dry and weary land … (Ps 63:1)

Let’s pray.