A Thirst-Quenching Savior - John 7:37-39
Well, in case you were wondering, Jesus is still at the Feast of Booths, but at this point in John 7, it is the last day of the Feast.
If you remember from last week, Jesus was still going back and forth with the Pharisees as he taught in the Temple. But now, the scene has changed and he’s no longer teaching. Now he’s at the Temple on the last day of the Feast of Booths which was this great celebration.
And at first glance, these verses might seem a bit out of place. Why is Jesus standing up and “crying out?” It feels like a very dramatic shift in scenes, doesn’t it? We go from teaching in the Temple to this?
He was just arguing with Pharisees and now he’s standing up and crying out? What exactly is going on?
This is one of those passages that require a bit of background information and historical context, because when you understand the setting and what was going on, it’s really not random at all. It’s actually quite fitting and appropriate for the setting. In fact, what Jesus says in verses 37-39 is directly connected to what’s going on around him.
What Jesus wants everyone to see is that he’s the fulfillment of the Feast of Booths. The Feast and all the ceremonies, celebrations that take place over the course of the week-long Feast find their fulfillment in him. He’s the one that all their ceremonial pomp and circumstance is pointing to!
At the ceremonial grand finale at the Feast of Booths Jesus stands up and bids all who are thirsty to come to him.
And what was true for the Feast of Booths is true for each of us today. You and I find our ultimate fulfillment and satisfaction in Jesus Christ. It’s a familiar message and it’s a theme that John makes throughout the course of his gospel, but it’s a message that should never get old. Your personal fulfillment is ultimately satisfied in Jesus Christ.
That message of gospel hope is such a powerful message because we live in such a cynical age. The world teaches that we are nothing more than blobs of cells and our lives have no meaning. There is no higher good, morality, or purpose.
Everything is left up to the individual. The only thing that matters is what’s important to you, and what you derive meaning from. Everything is about maximizing your personal happiness and pleasure.
If the world we live in only cares about happiness and pleasure is it really a shock that hook-up culture, addiction, and greed control so many people? People are wandering from mirage to mirage hoping to find true and meaningful satisfaction for their thirsty souls.
And it’s in the midst of this dry and hopeless spiritual desert the Lord Jesus Christ says, “If anyone thirsts let him come to me and drink.”
These few verses are a lot like a sunrise. Sunrises are beautiful in their own right. All the colors and beauty are first thing in the morning, but you don’t experience the sun in its full radiance and glory until it has completely risen over the mountains.
Find Your Satisfaction in Jesus Christ (v. 37)
This passage is a lot like that. The words of Jesus are wonderfully comforting in their own right, even when you can’t see or understand the full picture. But when you get the full picture his words are even better and more profound.
John is assuming that his readers have some degree of familiarity with what takes place at the Feast of Booths, so he doesn’t give us every detail. But knowing the details of the passage adds to the beauty of Christ’s words.
The Feast of Booths or Feast of Tabernacles is most well known for the little huts or “booths” that the Jewish people would construct and live in throughout the week of the Feast.
And as one commentator put it, they were, “celebrati[ing] God’s gracious provision for the Israelites in the wilderness and the completion of the year’s harvest. It involved various elements like a water drawing ceremony and a lamp-lighting ritual.”
We might refer to The Feast of Booths as a Harvest Festival. It consisted of sleeping outside in these little booths, eating special foods, along with many sacrifices and ceremonies.
It was for this reason, that the Feast of Booths was one of, if not the, most popular Jewish Feast.
And for seven days, a Temple Priest would perform this water drawing ceremony. He’d go to the pool of Siloam, fill up these golden pitchers with water from the pool and make a grand processional back to the Temple, trumpets would resound, there was great rejoicing, and singing praises from Scripture like Isaiah 12, “Let us draw water from the wells of salvation,” and along with the singing of Psalms.
Thousands and thousands of Jewish people from all over Israel would be in the streets of Jerusalem waving palm branches and holding fruit from the harvest. Excitement and jubilation filled the air, as the priest would pour out the water beside the altar.
And then they’d fall silent as the Priest poured water over the altar. This is what would take place on the last day of the Feast, and it’s at the end of all this ceremonial pomp and circumstance that Jesus stood up and shouted, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”
The water poured out by the Priest on the altar symbolized the blessings that would come with the future Messiah, and his spiritual life-giving water would stream out over all the earth, just as the water flowed from the rock in the wilderness.
In the midst of this great liturgical ceremony, rich with Biblical allusions and symbolism, the Lord Jesus points people to himself and says, “the promised one is here!”
The offer of salvation goes out to all people because it’s only through Jesus Christ that your soul’s thirstiness can be quenched. “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”
It’s quite reminiscent of John 4, when Jesus spoke to the woman at the well. Jesus told her, “...whoever drinks of the water that I will 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.”
If you remember from that encounter, Jesus reveals that the woman at the well had been married five times. She was clearly looking for something wasn’t she? Her soul was certainly thirsty and she thought that men could quench her thirst. But she kept falling into the same trap over and over and over again.
But who can’t relate? We all have thirsty souls, don’t we? And we’re always searching for something to satisfy it. We often expect things like love, success, respect, or a good reputation to quench our thirst, don’t we? But that’s just like being thirsty and instead of drinking a cool glass of water, you eat a frozen pizza. That high sodium is going to leave you parched.
That’s why Jesus’ water analogy is so powerful. It’s incredibly relatable isn’t it? We all know what it’s like to be extremely thirsty and to have our thirst quenched by cool, refreshing water.
And that’s precisely what it’s like to have your soul’s thirst quenched by faith in Christ. There’s a deep satisfaction that can only come from him.
It’s easy to suggest that we run to sin to quench our soul’s thirst and that’s certainly true, but it’s also true that we expect things that aren’t necessarily sinful to satisfy our souls as well. We can make idols out of anything. We’re all called to love our families, but we can make idols out of them. The same is true for our work. To work hard is good, but it too can quickly become an idol. We can all make good things, sinful things.
And the same goes, I think for the church. We can have an idolatrous relationship with what the church represents: potential friends, kid’s events, positive influences, fill in the blank. My point is that you can go to church and completely miss Jesus Christ. It’s like everything gets prioritized over Jesus.
In many ways, isn’t that what’s going on in this passage? They’re at the Temple, the Old Testament church if you will, and they’re excited as they watch these grand ceremonies take place that point to the Messiah, but are missing Jesus.
You have all this pomp and circumstance that was supposed to point one a Messianic future hope and the fulfillment of all of it is in their midst. The Jewish people that were there, were “doing the right thing!”
But would anyone have noticed if Jesus didn’t stand up and shout? It certainly doesn’t seem so, and of course Jesus recognized this. That’s why he cried out “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” He has to stand up and shout!
You can go to the nicest, friendliest, church in the world, you can go to the church with the best music in the world, and they can even be on the right side of all the cultural conversations, but if those things become more important than Jesus Christ, they’ve missed the point! How quickly we lose sight of what’s important!
The Spirit Produces Thirst-Quenching Water (vv. 38-39)
It’s pretty clear what Jesus means when he says, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” He’s encouraging everyone to come to him for salvation. It’s very reminiscent of Matthew 11 where he says, “Come to me all who are weary and I will give you rest.”
Peace and satisfaction for your eternal soul are only found in Christ. But what about verse 38? It’s a little more challenging to understand isn’t it? It’s not quite as clear, is it?
“Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”
There are a few obvious questions here: first, what Scripture is Jesus referring to? It’s not an exact Old Testament reference, more likely it's a conflation of several like Isaiah 44 or Ezekiel 36 – passages of Scripture that make the connection between water and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
But the more important question regarding verse 38 is who’s heart is “his heart?”
Is it referring to the believer? Upon first glance it may appear that way, but that doesn’t make sense because the believer has no control over the Holy Spirit! We cannot pour out the Holy Spirit, only the Lord can dispense the Holy Spirit. No doubt, every Christian is indwelt with the Holy Spirit and the Spirit encourages you and me to live and walk in obedience to the Lord. But we can’t send out the Spirit.
I tend to believe Jesus’s Scripture reference is speaking of the Christ’s or the Messiah’s heart. In other words, from Jesus will come the gift of the Holy Spirit, which makes perfect sense. Because what he’s essentially saying in verse 38 is, “If you believe in Jesus, you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
Which again, seems to make sense as verse 38 flows into verse 39 because verse 39 is prophecy of Pentecost. That grand moment after Jesus had ascended the Spirit dwelt upon believers. The Spirit has always been active, but it was at Pentecost, after the resurrection and Jesus’s ascension to the right hand of God the Father Almighty that we see the Spirit of the living God poured out among his people in a clear way.
Receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit is like being stranded in the desert, dying of thirst, only to stumble upon the most beautiful oasis.
There’s a great scene from the fictional movie Ben-Hur, the real Ben-Hur movie, which is the 1959 one, not the more recent one. But in the movie, there’s the powerful scene after Judah Ben-Hur has been condemned to be a galley slave and he’s being marched by his Roman captors for miles, he’s incredibly thirsty, and begs a Roman Soldier for water but the soldier denies him water. And he collapses over, and looks as if he is going to die, and as he’s laying there he prays, “God help me.” And just as he starts to close his eyes, Jesus shows up and gives him water to drink.
I tell you about that scene only because I think it’s a beautiful image of what we’re talking about here. Just as Jesus gave literal water to Ben-Hur to drink, so our Lord gives us the thirst-quenching Spirit.
As one pastor put it, “To those who are thirsty [Christ] hands the thirst-quenching Spirit.”
We’ve already seen it a few different ways in the gospel of John, but what John wants us to see is that Jesus is greater than Moses. Particularly, the ministry of Jesus is greater than Moses, which to our modern ears probably sounds obvious!
But it’s really not so obvious when you consider the fact that God through Moses established the nation of Israel. But here’s Jesus, promising the gift of the Holy Spirit to all who trust in him, which is significant because God’s blessing will not be isolated to one people, His blessing will be poured out on every tribe, tongue, and nation.
The gospel message will be for all people and everyone will have a direct line of communication with the Lord. No more priests, no more sacrifices, no more ceremonies, why? Because the Promised One has come and he bids you and me to come to him.
Conclusion:
I recently read a story about a runaway teen girl from Missouri. Her parents were desperate to find her. And so, they contacted the police and they were constantly pleading with her and the public to return her home safely.
They wanted her to come home.
Isn’t this in essence what the Lord Jesus did? He invited lost people to come home and find their rest in him.
“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” That statement takes on even greater meaning when you pull back and look at the whole of chapter 7. Jesus has been in the Temple in Jerusalem teaching the people, a people that have been largely hostile to what he’s said. After all, the Pharisees want Jesus dead.
But rather than condemn them, Jesus makes an open invitation to those who hate him, and want him dead, to have the thirst of their souls quenched through faith in him.
Again, isn’t this an incredible picture of the grace, mercy, and forgiveness of our Lord? The gospel message is even for those that hate Jesus.
The Lord stands ready to save his sworn enemies. The Lord himself is tabernacling among the people and inviting them to himself. What a glorious reminder of the gospel of Jesus Christ! “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
The only fulfillment and satisfaction for your thirsty soul is in Christ.
