SPEAKER_01 0:42

Let's just um we're continuing our series in the book of John, so we're gonna be in John chapter 7, verses 37 through 39. I um one of the best things I ever heard in my early Christian life is that we don't always need to be told a new truth so much as we need to be reminded of the truth because we get gospel amnesia. And so my hope today is that is that this sermon and this text, for some of us it's gonna be new. For a lot of us, it's gonna be a reminder of something that we need to be reminded of. Hear the word of God from John chapter 7, verses 37 through 39. On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, 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. 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. Please pray with me. Jesus, I pray that we would hear this word, we would be reminded of this central truth that the longing of our hearts, the thirst of the soul, can only be satisfied by you. In Jesus' name. Amen. One of my very favorite old Saturday Night Live spoof commercials, you know how they do these commercials. Um there's there's one they did where you see Will Farrell, he's he's playing basketball, and it's like this hot day, and and you know, you see him come off the court and he's dripping sweet, his face is red, and then they show Tim Meadows in a bike race, you know, 10-speed bike race, and he's just gutting it up this hill, right? And then they show show another cast member, she's running a marathon, and it's just the heat and the exhaustion and the thirst is just palpable. They shoot it like a Gatorade commercial, it's like thirsty for more, thirsty for life, and Wilt Farrell plops down, you know, just red-faced and and grabs this huge bottle, except, and it is not Gatorade, on the bottle that says cookie dough sport. And it's like cookie dough sport, smother your thirst. And you see him, you see him just squeeze this massive amount of cookie dough in his mouth, and then they got to Tim Meadows, and he takes out his cookie dough bottle on the bike and he's spraying it on his face like it's the most refreshing thing. And then, you know, the girl's going through her water station and stuff, she's grabbing cookie dough and throwing it back. And the reason it's funny is because that's ridiculous. The last thing you'd want when you're that thirsty is cookie dough. Smother your thirst. Right? Like, and and it works because you know that feeling, right? That feeling of thirst. It's a visceral feeling of the body needs something. You need something. The Bible often uses this universal and visceral experience that we all have of thirst to describe the need of the soul for God. What we read earlier in Psalm 63, O God, you are my God. Earnestly I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Or Psalm 42 of uh um 1970s pray song fame, as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God, my soul thirsts for God, for the living God. This is a very frequently used image and experience to describe what the soul longs for. And and the tricky thing is when we're when we're hot and playing basketball, we know exactly what we're thirsty for. But when when the soul thirsts for God, often we mistake what we need. We mistake the thing that we're thirsty for. This is the reason why. You could have a dream job, you could be fit as a fiddle, you could have a nice place to live, a nice car, uh, right, like all the entertainment you can get your hands on, plenty of pleasure in your life, and still feel like there is just something seriously missing. Like there's a longing somewhere that you can't reach. What are we actually thirsty for? Now I want to be clear. Not every not every desire is thirst for God. Right? Like we are made to be in relationship with other people. So when we're lonely, yes, we should reach to Jesus, but we should also call our friends. If you have been sitting at a computer all day and you're like, gosh, I feel all wrong, what's going on with me? You should go for a walk or something like that. That's what you're thirsty for, okay? So we don't want to be simplistic about this, but what Jesus, the claim Jesus makes here is that he's calling up this biblical tradition of the thirst of the soul. And what does he say in in verse 37? He says, on the it says, on the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He's saying, Me, I am what your soul thirsts for. We need to turn our spiritual thirst to Jesus. And the question is, why? What effect is it going like how is Jesus the answer to this desire of the soul? Well, the the the first part to understand is Jesus, what Jesus is saying is that he is the water with the power of life. That's the first claim, is that he is the water with the power of life. Now he doesn't say this explicitly, but you have to understand the historical background of what's going on. What's going on in John chapter 7, and I had considered doing the entire chapter, but I figure I can summarize, is they are attending the festival of booths or the feast of booths. It's one of the three pilgrimage festivals for the ancient Jews. And what they celebrated there was the time in the wilderness before they had their own land. And so what they would do is they would build booths, these little makeshift shelters from sort of found branches and leaves, and they'd eat their meals or sometimes sleep out there, um, you know, to remind them of how terrible camping is. And now that they have their own land, as is what I tell my wife, I'm Jewish, I don't camp. So you get your own land and you don't have to be in these booths, but you put the booth in your backyard to remind yourself how hard that was and how grateful you are for your own land. And and and part of having your own land, especially the land they had in the Fertile Crescent, is that it's good farmland. The Fertile Crescent, by comparison to surrounding areas, is very uh fertile because they get a lot of rain. And so, in addition to celebrating how God sustained them and brought them into their own land, they were also giving thanks for the harvest. It was it was a combo festival, the harvest festival. Now, here is how they would acknowledge the how they would give thanks for God's provision of the harvest. At dawn, the high priest would go to the pool of Saloon in Jerusalem with all the worshippers, and he'd take a golden pitcher and he'd get a pitcher full of water from the pool, and then they would take it in procession up to the temple. They would be blowing trumpets along the way, it was full pomp and circumstance, and when they would make the sacrifices, one of the things they poured out in thanks is this life-giving water. Water makes the harvest grow. You get it? And so what it says, and I love this because it's painting the picture in your mind, it says, on the last day of the feast, the great day, meaning at a point of high drama, of right, like perhaps when they're pouring out the water, but at least connected to it, Jesus gets up. Not one of the priests, by the way, and he says, Anyone who's thirsty, come to me. What's he saying? This life-giving water that we all celebrate here with thanksgiving to God, it's me. That He is the one who is the water with the power of life. Look, when the soul is thirsty, you reach for something. And that water, so to speak, that thing to which your soul is reaching, it has power. It has a power to change you. It will do something to you. Uh for those of you who have read The Lord of the Rings, not just seen the movies. I don't know what my name is. So, two of the hobbits, Mary and Pippin, they fall in with Treebeard, the Ant. This is in the movie. And the ants are sort of like big walking, talking trees, but not really. They resemble trees, but they're not trees. They were never trees. But they shepherd the trees, they care for the trees. Like huge loraxes for those who. And uh, and so Pippin and Mary go and stay at Treebeard's house. And Treebeard doesn't have like ordinary food, but he gives them the ent drops, the the this water that the ants drink. And it's a special kind of water, and he says, it will keep you. I do voices for my girls, it will keep you green and growing from that. Right? So they drink the ant drops, and what happens to them is their hair starts getting thicker and curlier, and and by the end of the book, they've they've grown to be the largest hobbits of all time. Right? That the the water had power in the same way. Gollum hanging on to that ring of power for so many years, what did it do to him? It had a power over him too. It changed him, it made him desolate, dry, stretched, right, miserable. These waters that our souls reach for have power. It is either going to make you flourish or it is going to make you desolate. When our soul thirsts for Jesus and we turn to binge of some kind, it has a power. You may not observe it in one go, you may not observe it in one year, but over time it will leave us desolate because we're not getting the water of life. If we go after, you know, just just whatever digital distraction, I need to scroll for a while. I don't know what's going on, but scrolling sounds good. It has a power. Or whatever other things you're consuming on the internet. When your soul thirsts. When we turn to that, instead of the water with the power to give us life, the the effect isn't zero. Right? The effect is desolation. I mean, just think about when the the studies that are being done on people who are consuming huge amounts of digital distraction. Here's a just a short list of what it does. Your attention span shortens, your ability to speak to people shortens, it increases depression, it increases anxiety, it triggers OCD, it increases social isolation, it destroys community, it damages your emotional regulation, it inhibits your decision making, it uh inhibits your cognitive control, etc. etc. Right? And that says nothing of what it's doing to the spirit.

unknown 13:30

Right?

SPEAKER_01 13:30

That's just the effects on cognition. When we find ourselves with a thirst of the soul and we are reaching to something else, that is not a value neutral uh choice. But when we drink of Jesus, we become more alive, as Mark was talking about earlier, right? Uh think of this. When you engage deeply with Christ through worship, through word, through fasting, through silence, or whatever, have you ever noticed this? How do you feel afterwards? You're like, that was the jam. How did I do that more often? You know? You find yourself more merciful, more compassionate. You grow in patience, your character is transformed, your soul wakes up, you you you find yourself moving towards community when you're drinking deeply of Jesus. That's because he is the water with the power of life. When the soul thirsts, it's so much easier to just scroll, turn it on, whatever. I'm gonna eat something, I'm gonna take something, you know, I'm gonna drink something because it's gonna make me feel better for a couple minutes. But you know, it's not just how it changes us, but it's also how effective it is. You know, one of the most one of the most frustrating things for for like a sailor lost at sea, uh a lot of people don't don't realize this, but if you're lost at sea, you are essentially in a desert. Right? Like there was a story I I read of this um a uh uh uh um uh what do you call him? A Navy sailor? That seems redundant. A naval sailor? US Navy Sailor. He's a sailor, right? Okay, great. Anyway, ship goes down, he's surviving in a dinghy, and he's out there for a long time, and he is thirsty. And he sees a seabird, I forget what kind, it lands just just just a few feet away, and it dips its head under the seawater and leg gurgles, you know, and it looks so refreshing, and he talked about it drove him nearly insane with desire to drink the seawater. But what's the problem there? We know that no matter how good that seawater looks, no matter how thirsty you feel, no matter how well it worked for that stupid bird, which he then killed, by the way, what is it gonna do? It's gonna do the opposite of what you want. It's only gonna make you more thirsty, right? Have you ever noticed, like Mark talked about, you do that impulse purchase? Ooh, it'd be good to shop for something right now. Does that satisfy the desire? Or does it what? It makes you more thirsty, doesn't it? Have you ever noticed my favorite when you reach for ice cream when you're spiritually thirsty? Does it actually work? No, you're like, it was hard to stop eating ice cream. That that last tent of the Ben and Jerry's at the bottom of there. I only stopped eating because it would make me physically sick. It doesn't work, it makes you want more, right? Along with the the scroll. It's literally designed to make you want more. It does the opposite. It will only make you more thirsty. Even those of us who are like, yeah, I don't do any of that time wasty stuff, I'm an achiever. So you work extra hard at your job, you have these huge life goals, right? And that's what you're reaching for, and those are those are great. Just like ice cream is great in its own way for its own purpose. But if spiritual thirst, you're trying to answer that, you're trying to quench that with another degree or another promotion or whatever, what does it do? It only makes you more thirsty. You get it and you say, That didn't quite make me feel as satisfied as I thought it was going to. On to the next, maybe the next one will be. The waters that we reach for. Not only do they leave us desolate, but they don't satisfy. They do the opposite. And when Jesus says, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink, that let him might be a little bit of an undertranslation. You could take it as he must. Meaning there isn't another option. For the thirst of the soul, only Jesus works. Even our whole sort of general, nondescript, undefined spirituality is not gonna work. Only Jesus works. Jesus is the water that not only transforms us and gives us life, but it's the water that satisfies the soul. And another really important part of this, and this is this is um this is where you the the uh when when you see the scriptures talk about spiritual hunger, it's very much the same, but this is where it really gets different with spiritual thirst. We're gonna take a look at the next couple verses, but first I want to know, have you guys ever heard the explanation of the difference between a spring and a cistern in the ancient world? Spring versus cistern. I'm seeing I'm seeing blank looks. Intelligent! Your faces are all intelligent, but blank. Intelligently blank. Okay, good. You don't know the difference between a cistern and a spring. So here it is, in the ancient world anyway. Modern world, I don't know what the difference is. All of my knowledge comes from 2,000 years ago. So uh a cistern is basically a terminal point for water. It's a method of storing water. And if you had a nice one, it was carved out of rock, and and you could kind of situate it to get water from a spring or rainwater or that sort of thing. And then the cheap ones would essentially be a plastered hole in the ground, and this was a problem because the the plaster would crack and then you'd get brackish water, right? This is what a lot of people dealt with in the ancient world. Still today, um, animals would crawl in and die. Um they would grow bacteria and mosquitoes. Okay, that's a cistern, stagnant, it's a terminal place for water of varying cleanliness. A spring is where an aquifer comes out. Now, the aquifer is the it's a it's a giant underground kind of collection point where water flows from, like all of the rainwater and the mountain water and everything, it seeps down into the earth's crust. And the aquifer is this giant moving body of water, and a spring is where an aquifer comes out. It's an opening, right? And it and the the water flows through. And and and then in the ancient world, this was the best you could get, right? It was cold, it was fresh, it was clean at all times because it was flowing, moving water. Right? This is what is often referred to as living water as opposed to stagnant water. We good now? You just learned something about the isn't that fun? It's fun. That's what it is. I think a lot of the time, we can have an understanding of what spirituality is all about, Christian or otherwise, as with with us as a cistern, our job is to just receive the water. Okay, we get it, we fill up. Well, I go to my Bible so I can fill up. I get financial blessings or my needs met so I can be filled, because I was empty and now I'm full. But what Jesus describes here is very, very different. He doesn't describe us as cisterns. He doesn't describe drinking from him as leading to you being a full cistern with mosquitoes. I don't know what the mosquitoes symbolizes. But it's bad. Instead, look at what he says in verses 38 through 39. He said, Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. 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. Now look at this description. Look at this image that Jesus gives. Whoever believes in me, right? That's drinking. And he says, as the scripture says, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Now that's John, uh, John seizing on something, Jesus said for a double meaning. Living water can mean a spring, that's living water, but also it's the word Zoe, which we know John uses to just to refer to eternal life. Okay, so it is both a moving river that we're supposed to imagine, a spring, and it's also water that leads to eternal life. And not only do we receive it, but what? It flows through you, out of his heart. Little fun thing is the actual Greek word means stomach. But that would just confuse English readers because we think of the heart as the seat of the emotions. The ancients thought that the stomach was the seat of the emotions, and the heart was the seat of the thoughts, and that the brain was used for ventilation. They might be right. We don't really know. Never seen. Anyway, I'm just kidding about that. But you know, uh, it's even um some of you might look at this and say, well, what scripture is he talking about? As the scripture says, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. The thing is, is that there's no single text that he's quoting here. Instead, he's drawing on this vast tradition of water and thirst used as an image for the Spirit of God and for God filling us. Right? It's similar to um, you know, if you like country music, if you if you say, uh, you know what country music says about mud on your tires. Right? Well, which which country music? It's like lots of it. You know, sort of mud on the tires is an emblem of a life well lived in country music, right? It's it's what it says in total about I can't find any negative references in country music to mud on the tires. Those of you who listen to country, amen? That's right. So Jesus is saying, you know how the old testament, you know what the old testament says about water flowing through you? Like all of it. In particular, there's a text, uh, Ezekiel 47. Now, Ezekiel was a prophet of the exile, and this was a time when there was no temple. And he has a vision that he's walking around the temple, and what he sees when he gets to the door of the temple is there's water flowing out under the door. And when he goes out front, he goes out front of the temple, he sees where it's going, it becomes this massive river, this deep river flowing from the temple to all of the nations, and everything the water touches lives, it says. Right? So I Jesus, among other texts, is especially seizing on that. He's saying that that those who believe in me, not only are they full at all times, but it flows through them. That the blessings of the Spirit, that the blessings of the kingdom are not to stagnate with us, but instead that Jesus is the water that flows through us. Is a spring full? Yeah, but it's also moving, right? For us, when we want to, it as we often as we feel spiritually thirsty, we can fall into a well, I just need to take right now. I just need to get into take mode. You know? I can't give because I'm thirsty. But what'll happen is cistern spirituality, you'll grow mosquitoes. I mean that in the most loving way possible. Foxes might die in you. Now I've taken the analogy too far. But you have to ask, all right. So as I'm as I'm sitting here asking, God bless me, give me satisfaction in my heart, God provide for my needs, or whatever, is your mentality so that I can be full or so that it can pass through me like a spring of living water? Am I going into my workplace? Am I going into my family? Am I going onto the internet as a person with rivers of lit waters of life flowing from me? Or political bile? Or pettiness, or I'm just showing up as a taker. Because that's an indication that we need to turn that spiritual thirst we have to the waters of life, Jesus. Because not only is he the life-giving water, not only does he satisfy the spiritual thirst that we have, but he is the water that flows through us. He turns us into springs, not cisterns. We receive and at the same time we give and we bless and we bring the bring kingdom life wherever we go. We need to turn our spiritual thirst to Jesus. There was one time I did an Olympic triathlon for the first time. Uh humble brag, right? But uh, I had to do it in Sterling, Colorado. Does anybody know where Sterling is? Anyone ever seen it? Yeah, did you like the tree? Yeah, the rest up before the tree. I'm sorry if anyone's from Sterling. That was but uh the reason we were doing it in Sterling is because it was uh it was a bad year for wildfires where we were gonna do it in a reasonable place. And uh thuns were tight at the time, so the night before me and my friend, we we camped. Now, I did not know this. You know that thing that goes over the tent? Did you know that helps keep moisture in so you don't dehydrate overnight? I didn't know that. We slept without it because we could see the stars. It was nice. I also didn't sleep very much because once again, camping. Now, the morning guns, and I'm up for the race, and um I had heard okay, this is gonna be TMI, I had heard stories about people, you know, doing longer traffons where when they have to go, they don't get off their bike, you know what I'm saying? And I was like, I don't want to do that. So my plan, and you're gonna see my folly right away, was just to take it easy on the water. I just won't drink as much. I just won't drink as much water, and then you know, I'll just make it through that however many hours of racing with less water after sleeping in an open tent and barely sleeping. So I get through the swim and the bike pretty well. Everything's going okay. I have exhausted my single bottle of water, and uh I am on the run course. It is 10:30 a.m. or so, and about 93 degrees with not a breeze, not a cloud, not a tree. It's Sterling. And I'm just chugging along, and and the first sign that there was a problem happened in my right hamstring. It goes, it made that sound. And I was like, oh, that's not good. That really isn't good. Is there a water station? No, this is a poorly planned race, and so I just slacked my pace and and and uh and and things went back to normal. Uh a friend later told me, you actually tore your muscle at that point. That's why it felt better. Okay, great. So I was going along, I had slowed down, and and then oh gosh, the other one, the left one now, uh, did the same thing, and I was like, oh, oh, this is really getting bad now. I am I'm super duper dehydrated. And then finally, finally, finally, the the the finish line hoves into view. And I was like, oh, I'm gonna pick up the pace a little bit. I never picked up the pace, I just thought it, and at that moment, both of my legs completely seized to where I couldn't bend them, and I ran across like this, and then I fell down, and my friend who was an EMT uh recognized the signs of dehydration and heat exhaustion, and he came over with the life-giving gift. In this case, chocolate milk, but let's pretend it was water for the purposes of the sermon. My body! There was no mistaking. It was crying out, it was showing every sign. What? That I needed water, which is most of chocolate milk. Let's let's remember that.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

What if I had said, quick, bring me a movie? Quick, I need to buy something. Can I borrow your phone? Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, let's scroll.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Oh, my thumb is seized too. Would that be absurd? No. I might have actually died, he said, if I didn't get water sometime soon. That would be utterly ridiculous if when I was in that dire of need I were to reach to anything but water, right? But the next time you find yourself with the symptoms of spiritual thirst, I just need something right now. I gotta buy that, I gotta scroll this, I gotta eat that, I gotta take this, I gotta drink this. Unless it's water. Right? Like, that's a sign of spiritual thirst. Let's not lay hold. Let's not turn to satisfy it with anything except the one place that it can find its satisfaction, and that is Jesus. Please pray with me. Jesus, how foolish we are. That we try and satisfy spiritual thirst with food or sex or digital distraction or anything else. I pray that you would remind us of this truth. That achievement or pleasure or what have you, it is not gonna fill the soul. That you alone could do that. Made us where we are, Lord. Forgive us our foolishness. Please turn us into springs of living water as you promise. In Jesus' name. Amen.