The Flow Series

Good morning. Did everybody get a bottle of water when they came in? Don’t you think that was nice of us to give you water? How many of you would have preferred an air conditioner? We are going to take an offering right now for the air conditioning. Actually, the good news is we have installed some air conditioning this past week. The bad news is it is in the nursery and the children’s area so you have to work down there and change a few stinky diapers and you will get cooled off. We don’t have to worry about bottled water. We don’t have to worry about air conditioning because Jesus offers us this thing called living water. If you open your Bibles to the book of John today we are going to see about that living water. As you know, we have been looking at the gospel of John. We are in chapter 7. You may recall that chapter 7 is about Jesus going up to the Feast of the Tabernacles. You may recall that the Feast of the Tabernacles was a festival for the Jewish people to commemorate the time spent in the wilderness where God continued to provide for them for up to 40 years. About halfway through the feast, Jesus got up and began to speak publicly. He spoke with such authority that people were blown away by his teaching. He didn’t have a degree. He wasn’t a formal teacher. He hadn’t gone through the formal schools of the Rabbi. Jesus said if anybody does the will of the father, they will know whether this teaching that he speaks is true or not. Last week, we talked about how Jesus continued to speak at the festival and how a rumor started happening that Jesus might actually be the long-awaited Messiah because the Jewish authorities hadn’t yet arrested Jesus. Jesus told the people you really don’t know me. If you knew my father, you would know me. Today, we continue on with Jesus speaking at the Feast of the Tabernacles, but this time it is the last day of the feast. He gets up and doesn’t say he is the Messiah. He doesn’t speak of his authority. He speaks of the fact that he offers them something they can’t get anywhere else. He offers them living water. We are going to read from chapter 7 and we are going to start back in verse 37. John 7:37-44. (Scripture read here.)

So here we have the situation where Jesus is at this festival. The festival would have certain ceremonies. One of the ceremonies that they would have would be a ceremony of water. What they would do on the last day of the feast is have these golden urns filled with water to the brim. They would be at the top of the temple steps. The priests would slowly let the water and out and it would cascade down the steps and all the while people are singing praise to God. That is what is going on there. In the middle of this holy moment, Jesus being Jesus decides to stand up and make a little announcement to get the attention off the water and on to him. He says “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” This scripture probably doesn’t mean a whole lot to us. But I guarantee it meant a whole lot to the Jewish people. They didn’t just look at this ceremony as a way to commemorate an historic event in the past where God miraculously provided water in the wilderness. They saw this event as somehow predicting what would happen in the future when God would provide the living water. When God would pour out his spirit to the people. Jesus implies that they know what he is talking about because he says “as the scripture has said”. The problem with this verse is that we really don’t know which scripture he is talking about. There is a lot of scripture in the Old Testament that speaks of this idea of water and connects water to the spirit. One particular verse that some suggest he is talking about comes out of the book of Isaiah. Isaiah 44:3 says “For I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground. I will pour out my spirit on your offspring and my blessing on your descendants.” You may recall if you are familiar with the Old Testament prophets that Isaiah was one of the big prophets in the Old Testament times. He was one of the prophets that originally spoke wrath upon the people and warned the people if they didn’t straighten up their act, God was going to send them off into exile and was going to take them from their land. But he also prophesized in the later part of Isaiah that the people would come back. The temple would be restored and there would be a form of spiritual renewal. The spirit would come back. God would come back and put his blessing upon the people. Jesus is taking the symbolism of the ceremony, he is taking the Old Testament scriptures, particularly the scriptures from the prophets, and he is beginning to apply them to himself. He is saying he is the spirit. He is the one who is going to provide the living water. He is the one that is going to provide the spiritual refreshment. He is the one that is going to provide the Holy Spirit.