Or, The Difference Between Blessing Cul-de-sacs and Conduits
Scripture: John 7:37-39
Date: August 19, 2012
Speaker: Sean Higgins
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It is easy to take water for granted in Western Washington. We look forward to when it isn’t raining since we enjoy so much precipitation throughout the year. We might find ourselves more eager and more thankful for the rain if our livelihoods, our very lives, depended on rain for the sake of our crops. We would probably find ourselves praying for rain and celebrating God’s graciousness to send it.
The Feast of Booths was a national week of worship in Israel that occurred after the fall harvest. It was a festival that looked back to God’s provision for Israel while they were in the wilderness and at God’s provision of seasonal crops. The festival also looked forward in anticipation of God’s ongoing provision, including the time when He would pour out His promised Spirit.
The Feast of Booths was “at hand” (7:2) and Jesus went up “about the middle of the feast” (7:14) and began teaching in the temple. The Jewish pilgrims, the Jerusalemites, and the authorities all responded with varying degrees of disbelief and discrediting. When Jesus claimed to be sent from God (7:28-29) they went ballistic and, when He claimed that He was going to return to the One who sent Him (7:33-34), their desire to arrest Him snowballed.
John 7:37-52 records what happened “on the last day of the feast” and begins with a most spectacular promise of provision, a promise that fulfilled not only the imagery of the Feast, but also the whole Old Testament. Verses 37-39 are an overflow of fulfillment as we see Jesus satisfying Scripture promises and soul thirst.
John adds the context information not only to relieve us that Jesus has not been taken into custody yet, but also to whet our interest in Jesus’ offer.
On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, (John 7:37a, ESV)
The Feast of Booths was officially a seven day feast that lasted eight days (Leviticus 23:33-36). The Old Testament explicitly describes the seven day duration and also that on the eighth day there was to be a holy convocation, a solemn assembly (Leviticus 23:36; Nehemiah 8:18). According to some historians, the day that included the most sacrifices was the first day and the number of sacrifices decreased each day until the seventh. (It’s not hard to imagine that your camping supplies decreased throughout the week.) But on the eighth day when the booths were taken down and people began prepping to return home and back to work, there was one more day of worship.
It doesn’t really matter whether the “last day” is understood as the seventh day or the eighth day, John also calls it the great day or, perhaps in our vernacular, the “big day.” It was a great day in the life of the nation seeing that it was the last day of the final festival of the year.
Throughout the feast, one of the daily sacrifices performed in the temple included priests taking bowls or pitchers, going down to the Gihon spring on the southeast side of the Temple, filling them with water, and pouring them out as a liturgical symbol of God’s provision for His people, all while a choir repeated Isaiah 12:3 (Newman and Nida, A Handbook on the Gospel of John, 244).
With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. (Isaiah 12:3, ESV)
Remember, not long after Israel exited Egypt that the people grumbled about the lack of water and God miraculously provided out of the rock. Their lives depended on water and as they returned to the promised land and began to establish themselves, their animals and crops continued to depend on God’s provision. According to Zechariah 14:16-17, God threatened that “there will be no rain” on those who don’t “go up to Jerusalem to worship the King” and “to keep the Feast of Booths.”
So in a day without indoor plumbing and cases of bottled water from Costco, and while not living in western Washington, the symbolism of the feast pointed the people to God. Jesus will make clear that the symbolism of the sacrifices specifically pointed to Himself.
Here is one of the most succinct and most spectacular calls of Jesus.
“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” (John 7:37b–38, ESV)
The first sentence, by itself, might suggest that Jesus was setting up a roadside lemonade stand. Instead, He again uses physical imagery to make His invitation as He did with being born again (chapter 3), with well water welling up (chapter 4), and with fleshly bread (chapter 6). He returns to living water not because He’s at a well, but because of the Feast and the OT prophecies about water.
The come to me and drink means to believe as the next sentence defines. The come to me makes it personal and the drink makes it a quenching, a fulfilling, a satisfying. Jesus doesn’t say explicitly that one’s thirst will be satisfied, as He did with the Sycharian woman, but the crowd could have assumed that He meant to provide fully. He would certainly satisfy.
What is not certain is if anyone thirsts . Those who thirst will be satisfied, but who thirsts? How is this condition fulfilled? In other biblical contexts we may understand that soul-thirst is built-in, but that is not how Jesus approaches the condition here. Adipsia is lack of thirst, perhaps sort of a dehydration leprosy where one can’t sense the need for water.
There is no indication in the story itself that anyone in the crowd came to Jesus to drink. The entire chapter has been one attempt after another to pour contempt on Jesus, not to be provided for by Jesus. Those who “believed” based it on His signs (verse 31). Others attempted to connect Jesus with OT promises, but John still doesn’t say that they drank.
It is strange for a Gospel aimed at our believing that there is so little mention of men believing. Yet that doesn’t stop John from repeating Jesus’ own invitations to believe. The call itself—as part of God’s Word—may create thirst. The Holy Spirit—whom John connects to Jesus’ words—may create thirst. If anyone thirsts, come and drink.
It is purposefully similar to the prophet Isaiah.
“Come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
hear, that your soul may live;
(Isaiah 55:1–3a, ESV)
That satisfaction is found in Jesus.
The one who drinks is “the one believing” (another substantival participle characterizing the person by ongoing believing), and there is more than satisfaction that comes from drinking. Jesus told the woman at the well that living water would keep her from more thirst.
Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. (John 4:13-14, ESV)
Now Jesus says that living waters will flow out from the drinker. In the first place, thirst is quenched, and then a drink becomes a fulfillment to others. She was a receptacle, here a drink becomes a river. The living water went into her and satisfied her soul, here the living water goes through and satisfies other souls.
Jesus couches the promise by saying, as the Scripture says . The initial problem is that there is not one verse that includes this quotation. Jesus isn’t quoting one part, He’s synthesizing all the parts, summarizing the whole OT, and He’s satisfying the promises. Not only did the Lord provide water in the desert, the Lord would pour out His Spirit (Isaiah 44:3; Joel 2:28-29).
Out of his heart in the ESV is actually “out of his belly” (κοιλία, referring to the digestive organs, or womb). Drinking water goes into the belly, so it seems like a natural enough illustration. Or perhaps “belly” and “heart” (καρδία) are synonyms, since it is figurative language anyway. The emphasis is that the person isn’t a cul-de-sac of life and blessing, but rather a conduit.
The drink of water becomes rivers of living water . There is an overflow, an abundance, an in-n-out for the satisfaction Jesus promises. In other words, we are not isolated, “me and Jesus alone,” we are channels of Jesus’ life for many.
[I]f you pour yourself out for the hungry
and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
then shall your light rise in the darkness
and your gloom be as the noonday.
And the LORD will guide you continually
and satisfy your desire in scorched places
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters do not fail.
(Isaiah 58:10–11, ESV)
We cannot keep a lid on life. We cannot damn this living water up and keep it all to ourselves. But of course we do not believe this. We strategize how to protect our resources, as if they could run out. Yes, natural resources can and will run out, but these are supernatural resources. This is not a wish on our part (“Boy, that would be nice.”), this is God’s Word. His name is on the paperwork. He is fulfilling what He said He’d do, we believe Him. One mouthful becomes many rivers.
John adds a bit of commentary to clarify Jesus’ words.
Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. (John 7:39, ESV)
This does not mean that the Spirit wasn’t already at work. John already said that the Spirit was at work in Jesus (John 1:32), that the Spirit caused men to be born again (3:5-6, 8), that no one has life without the Spirit (6:63). Whoever thirsted did so by the Spirit. Whoever came to Jesus did so by the Spirit.
Yet there was another sense in which the Spirit was not indwelling believers until after Pentecost (see Acts 1:8). Once Jesus ascended, He sent His Spirit to live in, not just work in, the hearts of His people. Jesus promised to send the Spirit and John was writing from a post-Pentecost perspective.
I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. (John 16:5–7, ESV)
The disciples/believers could not yet be conduits of life because Jesus had not yet given His life. They weren’t ready to explain the sacrificial death of Christ because it hadn’t happened yet. Those in the crowd who did believe at the moment would be come rivers of life after the resurrection to life and the empowering of the Spirit. That would happen after Jesus was glorified.
If you are not a believer, then you can only have an empty, dry life. Filling up your days with work, filling up your garage with toys, filing up your Facebook with friends, these cannot satisfy. Only Christ promises life. (The rich man’s torment, desiring Lazarus to dip his finger in water to relieve the pain.)
If you are a believer, and since we are after Jesus has been glorified, then out of our hearts flow rivers of living water. The Spirit has been sent, He dwells within us and makes us fruitful. God’s promise is to use us to overflow in life that others might have life. They are to get to Christ—the spring—via us. Let us not be stopping up the flow.
That means that if others around us are dry, there must be a problem with our drinking.