— Welcome & Introduction — This is not a passage specifically about mothers. I think those of us who preach often feel that if we ever fail the occasion, it may be on Mother's Day. Sometimes I felt like I ought to take all my Mother's Day sermons, put them in a safe and lock them up, and leave them there. We are going to look at a word about our Lord today that's sufficient for this day and for other days.
— Scripture Reading: John 7 — If you'd find yourself in John Chapter 7, I'm going to be reading from the New King James Version, one of many good versions. This is in the midst of our Lord's public ministry, a striking event that captured the attention of the nation, perhaps for the first time in his life. He's gone up to Jerusalem, to one of the three great feasts where hundreds of thousands of people would go, the Feast of Tabernacles. And if I could put it this way, he stood up and without any announcement interrupted church.
— Scripture Reading: He said in verse 37, On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying... If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. But this he spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
— Scripture Reading: If anyone comes to me, he said.
— Scripture Reading: — Opening Prayer — Would you join me for a word of prayer? Eternal God, our triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit, in the mystery of a God who is three-in-one. We pray on this day, this special day, and memorable day, that these words of the Lord Jesus Christ, spoken half a world away and long ago... Might be visited by the very Spirit that he promised, and might bring about in us what you promised, and that is faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. It's in his name we pray. Amen.
— Scripture Reading: You know, I don't know exactly what the result of it was, but some of you may remember doing it.
— Scripture Reading: — Childhood Water Story — I remember it clearly in days when we'd get out of the house all day and not report back in until the streetlights came on, one of the dangers was going inside to drink. So we would drink water out of rubber water hoses, anybody here ever do that? Oh, well good. You know, there in July, baked in the sun, I can still taste that distinctive taste, some of y'all could testify here. Isn't it interesting what's happened to water? In our day water has become something very much else.
— Scripture Reading: You sit down at a restaurant, particularly a nicer restaurant, you've got choices, don't you? Do you want domestic water or international water? Water that came H-E-B, or water that comes from Fiji or somewhere. And then you've got to decide, do you want still water or sparkling water? And then if you drill down in that, is it naturally sparkling, or did they make it sparkle? Is it processed? By the time it's over, I'm almost in the paralysis of analysis what to do about water. It's a long way from those hoses in July.
— Scripture Reading: Our text today has in the middle of its theme, water. Jesus is up in Jerusalem at one of the three national feasts. Josephus, who was a contemporary with Jesus and wrote histories, would say there'd be a million people there. Now Josephus didn't lie, he remembered big, probably several hundred thousand people there, a great crowd. The beginning of this chapter on the front porch, Jesus' brothers, James and the others who didn't believe in him, taunted him.
— Scripture Reading: Said you think you're a prophet, go up to Jerusalem, that's where prophets go. He didn't go with them, but he sneaked in later to the Feast of Tabernacles.
— Context: Feast of Tabernacles — In that land where there's less than 10 inches of rain a year, life was organized around water. Finding water, having water, needing water. The early rains caused the crops to sprout, then there was a long dry spell. And this feast was purposefully at the end of that long dry spell where both the farmers out in Israel and the urban dwellers in Jerusalem would have a feast. It's an interesting feast because they look back at their own history, I don't know what you'd compare it with in our country, maybe 4th of July or something.
— Context: Because back in their history as a slave people, they'd spent 40 years in the desert living in, ah we'd call them brush arbors, things built out of myrtle and olive and palm branches. Their ancestors had lived out that way waiting for the promised land, so they'd come back to Jerusalem and kind of try to reproduce it. Build those kind of shelters on rooftops and in plazas. That's when Jesus showed up. Said he showed up on the last day, the great day of the feast, and you read about that in other dictionaries, huge day.
— Context: Seventy bulls sacrificed, one for each of the 70 nations they said. Twenty-one trumpets around the 35 acres of Solomon and Herod's Temple. And the priest would go to the pool of Siloam, a public water source, and fill a golden pitcher and bring it back and pour it ceremoniously down a silver funnel. And the generations would dance around the altar and sing Psalm 118, it's a big time, a feast. And in the midst of that, apropos of nothing, surprising everybody, this Nazarene carpenter, Son of Man, Son of God, cried out.
— Context: It's an interesting word, it's only used twice in the New Testament. Used of John the Baptist, who didn't have any public address system, and of Jesus when he called Lazarus out of the tomb. He interrupted church. I mean this was a liturgy, it was a ceremony, it was unexpected.
— Context: — Jesus's Invitation to Drink — Here he stood and cried out, "If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink." "And out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water." It was probably received about as well as anytime somebody stands up and calls out in church, it shocked the crowd. Here over against a national gathering, he offered himself as a substitute.
— Context: It's as if he said, this is a ceremony, I'm the reality. This is preparatory, I'm the real deal. This is a shadow, but I'm the substance. I want us to take a look at this a moment and I'll sit down, this striking public cry of Jesus, substituting himself for everything else that was going on.
— Context: — Recognizing Spiritual Thirst — Really begins with a recognition of need. He says, if anyone thirst. By this time the blowing sands of the desert was filling every pore of people short of water, needing the latter rain, so it worked, if anyone thirst. But you know if you're a reader of scripture, that that's a figure of speech for what we are spiritually.