I imagine most of us remember the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks. In case you don’t remember or never saw it, it is the story of Chuck Noland, played by Hanks, a top engineer for FedEx who gets marooned alone on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean.
Obviously, one of Noland’s first concerns after he washes up on the island is finding drinkable water. He tries desperately to split open a coconut, only to watch as most of the milky juice spills out on to the ground. He lifts up a fragment of the shell and drains the few remaining drops of liquid into his mouth.
Most of us have never been marooned on a desert island, but we probably can relate to being thirsty at some time or another. In our passage for today from John 7:32-39, Jesus uses physical thirst as a metaphor for spiritual thirst, something I believe we all have. Listen for God’s word to you…
Yet many in the crowd believed in him and were saying, “When the Messiah comes, will he do more signs than this man has done?”
The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering such things about him, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent temple police to arrest him. Jesus then said, “I will be with you a little while longer, and then I am going to him who sent me. You will search for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come.” The Jews said to one another, “Where does this man intend to go that we will not find him? Does he intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? What does he mean by saying, ‘You will search for me and you will not find me’ and ‘Where I am, you cannot come’?”
On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
In this passage we see the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus’ day, the chief priests and the Pharisees, trying to arrest him because of his claim to be the Messiah, and because many people are starting to follow him. Apparently, the religious leaders did not want Jesus stealing their thunder.
In response, Jesus says that he is not going to be with them much longer. He is going away to the one who sent him, God the Father. The people will look for him but not be able to find him. Where he is going, they cannot come.
The crowd wonders what Jesus is talking about. Where is he going to go? They don’t understand that he is going back to his heavenly Father. They think, perhaps, he is going outside of Israel: that he is going to preach among the Greeks. Indeed, the risen Christ will, by the power of the Spirit working through his followers, take the Gospel to the Greeks, but not yet.
This is the setting in which Jesus makes his great statement during the Festival. Jesus offers to us a great invitation, a great directive, and a great promise.
First, let’s look at Jesus’ great invitation. Jesus invites anyone who is thirsty. This invitation is as wide as humanity. Anyone and everyone who is thirsty, is invited.
Think about those who were in Jerusalem for this Festival when Jesus spoke these words. It was the Festival of Sukkot, which begins on the fifth day after Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It represents a very dramatic transition, from one of the most solemn Jewish Festivals to the most joyous. Sukkot has a dual significance, historical and agricultural. Historically, it commemorates the forty years during which Israel wandered in the desert and lived in tents. Thus, this festival is often called in English, the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. Agriculturally, Sukkot is a harvest festival, occurring in late September or early October; it is often called the Feast of Ingathering. Sukkot is one of the three Jewish pilgrimage festivals when Jews from around the world travel to Jerusalem for the feast. The other two pilgrimage festivals are Passover and Pentecost (the Jewish Feast we remember today when Jesus poured out the Spirit).
There were some four to five million Jews living outside of Israel in the first century. Every major city had at least one synagogue. Rome may have had as many as eleven with a Jewish population of 40 to 50,000.
Many of these Jews would come to Jerusalem for the pilgrim festivals of Sukkot, Pentecost and Passover. Acts 2 tells us that there were Jews from all over the Roman Empire in Jerusalem for the Festival of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon Jesus first disciples. And some three thousand Jews were added to the early church that day.
Well, there would have been a similar gathering of Jews from all over the world, present in Jerusalem for the Feast of Sukkot. In addition, there would have been proselytes (Gentiles who were in the process of becoming Jews) and other Gentiles as well. Thus, Jesus’ invitation really was extended to a gathering of people representative of the entire world.
Furthermore, Jesus’ invitation was significant in the context of Sukkot itself. Jesus invites anyone who is thirsty.
Jesus spoke these words on the final, climactic day of the festival. On that day, the priests, along with the worshippers, would go outside the city, to the pool of Siloam. There they would fill golden pitchers with water. Then they would return to the city and to the Temple, where they would march around the altar seven times and pour water from the pool on the altar. The ceremony was intended to remind the Jewish people of God’s provision of water for them during their wilderness wanderings.
It was perhaps at this very moment in the celebration of Sukkot that Jesus spoke his great words of invitation: “Let anyone who is thirsty…”
Today, Jesus extends the same invitation. Have we heard it? Are we thirsty? Then we too may come to him.
You may say, “But I am not thirsty for Jesus. I’, thirsty for pleasure. I’m thirsty for power. I’m thirsty for success.”
We are all thirsty for many things. However, Jesus promises to quench our thirst. He promises to meet our most crucial longings, as we saw in John 4 when Jesus said to the woman at the well: “Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.” (John 4:14)
Are we thirsty for pleasure? In Psalm 1:11 we read, “At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.”
Are we thirsty for wealth? Jesus promises to make us co-heirs, heirs of God. (Romans 8:17)
C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity…
Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably, earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.[1]
We may not be thirsty for the best things, but to be thirsty is better than not to be thirsty at all. To realize we have a need is better than being apathetic. Of course, the best thing is to come to Jesus and have our greatest, deepest, thirst quenched.
That is precisely what Jesus tells us to do in his great directive. Jesus’ directive is: “come to me and drink”.
Jesus does not direct us to a set of beliefs or rules, as important as those things may be. He directs us to come to a person, to come to him and a personal relationship with him. Jesus does not even direct us to come to a church or an institution. At the very heart of one of the greatest festivals in Judaism, Jesus was using the ritual to point people to himself. If the ritual of any church points us to Jesus and we come to him to drink deep of his living water, then that ritual will have done its job. If any ritual does not have that effect on us, then perhaps we should let it go. We need to turn from ceremony to the Savior.
How are we to come to Jesus? As I have suggested over the last few Sundays, I believe there are many ways of coming to Jesus. Scripture and prayer are two of the most important vehicles that bring us to him.
But often we are afraid to come to Jesus. In C. S. Lewis’ children’s story, The Silver Chair, there is a girl named Jill who is drawn from our world into Narnia for the first time. She is extremely thirsty, and soon she hears a babbling brook. However, when she gets to the stream, she sees a great lion there; she does not know who Aslan is, the Christ-figure of the story. All she knows is that she is thirsty and afraid…
“If I run away, it’ll be after me in a moment,” thought Jill. “And if I go on, I shall run straight into its mouth.” Anyway, she couldn’t have moved if she had tired, and she couldn’t take her eyes off it. How long this lasted, she could not be sure; it seemed like hours. And the thirst became so bad that she almost felt she would not mind being eaten by the Lion if only she could be sure of getting a mouthful of water first…
“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.
“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.
“Then drink,” said the Lion.
“May I—could I—would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.
The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.
“Will you promise not to—do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.
“I make no promise,” said the Lion.
Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer. “Do you eat girls?” she said.
“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.
“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.
“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.
“Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”
“There is no other stream,” said the Lion. It never occurred to Jill to disbelieve the Lion—no one who had seen his stern face could do that—and her mind suddenly made itself up.
It was the worst thing she had ever had to do, but she went forward to the stream, knelt down, and began scooping up water in her hand. It was the coldest, most refreshing water she had ever tasted. You didn’t need to drink much of it, for it quenched your thirst at once. Before she tasted it she had been intending to make a dash away from the Lion the moment she had finished. Now, she realized that this would be on the whole the most dangerous thing of all.[2]
Coming to Jesus to drink is dangerous. He promises to possess us completely. However, his is the only stream that promises to completely satisfy us. So, we must either come, or die of thirst.
The question is: how do we drink the water Jesus wants to give us? Drinking implies taking Jesus into us. When we drink a glass of water, we take that water into our bodies and it becomes a part of us. In the same way, we need to take Jesus into ourselves so that he becomes a part of us. We can do that through reading Scripture and prayer as I have already suggested. But there is a third way that we drink of Jesus. We do it whenever we partake of the Lord’s Supper in faith. We drink of that cup of which Jesus said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” (Luke 22:20)
That which we drink becomes a part of us, and if it is wholesome, it helps us to grow. We drink Christ through the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and he becomes part of us, helping us to grow.
In fact, in John 7, Jesus gives us a promise of growth. Hear his great promise: “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”
Is that not a promise of growth, of expansion? In John 4:14 Jesus said, “but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Jesus promises in John 4:14 to give us water that will quench our thirst. But in both John 4 and 7 he promises to do more than that. He promises to give us water that will bubble up and overflow, becoming a river of living water flowing from us. John adds that by “living water” Jesus meant the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And we can receive the Spirit right now. We don’t have to wait for him. All we have to do is ask and Jesus will give the Spirit to us to quench our thirst and the thirst of others. Jesus said, “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13)
When I first came to this church and was preaching from the book of Acts, about the Holy Spirit, I used this illustration…
If I am holding a cup of water filled to the brim, and I carry it with me as I walk through my daily life, then if I bump into someone, that water is going to overflow from the cup and spill on to the person I bump into.
The same is true of our relationship with Jesus. If we are filled up with him, by the Holy Spirit in us, then when we bump into people in our daily lives, the Spirit of Jesus will naturally overflow on to them.
The only question then is: are we filled to the brim with the Spirit of Jesus? And if we are not, then all we have to do is ask…
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