THIRSTY?
John 7:37-39
S: Life
Th: Living water
Pr: WE ARE DESIGNED TO BE SATISFIED.
?: How?
KW: Courses of action
TS: Since we are designed to be satisfied, we will find in our study of John 7:37-39 three courses of action we take to accomplish that state of contentedness.
The _____ course of action is to…
I. GRASP
II. GULP
III. GUSH
Version: ESV
RMBC 28 July 02 AM
INTRODUCTION:
ILL Notebook: Preparation (neckties)
A man is crawling through the Sahara desert when he is approached by another man riding on a camel. As the rider approaches, the crawling man whispers through his parched lips, ”Water. . .please. . .can you give. . .water…”
“I’m sorry,” replies the man on the camel, “I don’t have any water with me. But I’d be delighted to sell you a necktie.”
“Necktie?” whispers the man. “I need water!”
“They’re only four dollars a piece.”
“I need water.”
“Okay, okay, two for seven dollars.”
“Please! I need water!” the man exclaims.
“I don’t have any water, all I have are ties,” replies the salesman, as he heads off into the distance.
By now the man has lost all track of time, crawling through the desert seemingly for days. Finally, nearly dead, with clothes tattered and skin peeling under the relentless sun, he comes to an oasis with a restaurant. Summoning his last bit of strength he staggers to the door and confronts the headwaiter.
“Water. . .can I get. . .water,” the dying man pleads.
“I’m sorry, sir. Neckties required.”
Have you ever really been thirsty?
When you are thirsty, there is not much else you can think about, like appropriate clothing attire for fine dining.
When you are thirsty, you cannot get it out of your mind.
It is all you think about.
TRANSITION:
As we come to our text today, it is found in the context of thirst.
As you may remember from our previous studies, we are with Jesus in Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles.
The Feast of Tabernacles was a time to remember when Israel lived in the wilderness before coming to the Promised Land.
One of the rituals was intended to remind them of the time that they were very thirsty.
Here is how the story goes as it reads in Exodus 17:
[1] All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. [2] Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” [3] But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” [4] So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” [5] And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. [6] Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. [7] And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
So…
1. During the feast, water is poured out to remember the wonderful supply God gave to the Jews in the wilderness (cf. Exodus 17:1-7).
Each morning at the time of sacrifice, the priests would draw water in a golden vessel from the Pool of Siloam and carry it to the temple to be poured out.
It was a very festive time each day, as people would wave palm branches, rejoicing and praising God.
This is the background, then, to which Jesus speaks, when He says:
“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”
One thing that should catch our attention today, is that though…
2. Rejected and condemned, Jesus continues to offer Himself to those who will hear and receive Him (I Corinthians 10:4).
In our studies so far this year, we have seen Jesus condemned by the Jewish religious leaders in chapter 5.
In chapter 6, Jesus is abandoned by the multitude in Galilee.
Then in chapter 7, a warrant for His arrest is issued in Jerusalem.
But what we are to note here is that Jesus does not turn away from those that have turned on Him.
He continues to extend that gracious invitation.
Though He has already suffered large-scale rejection (and will experience more during the next six months), He continues to offer Himself as the answer to their deepest needs.
The apostle Paul will later reinforce the connection between this incident in Exodus and Jesus in his letter to the I Corinthians.
He writes:
[1] I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, [2] and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, [3] and all ate the same spiritual food, [4] and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.
Paul understands that the that Moses struck in the wilderness was a foreshadowing of what Jesus would do for us.
When Moses struck the rock, life-giving water came out.
In the same way, Jesus was about to be struck, and He would fulfill this text.
He would offer life-giving water.
So, as the water is poured out during the Feast of Tabernacles, He, in effect, is making the claim, “I am the Rock.”
“I am that Rock you celebrate.”
“I can satisfy your thirst.”
“I can satisfy your innermost needs.”
As we look at this text a bit more completely, please see this…
3. WE ARE DESIGNED TO BE SATISFIED.
Jesus offers Himself so that we will have hearts that are content and souls that are satisfied.
So…
4. Since we are designed to be satisfied, we will find in our study of John 7:37-39 three courses of action we take to accomplish that state of contentedness.
Here is our text…
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.
OUR STUDY:
I. The first course of action is to GRASP.
1. We are invited to come (Isaiah 55:1).
This is a theme that continues throughout Scripture.
The prophet Isaiah would announce:
“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters…”
Jesus continues the invitation.
“Come!”
“Make the move!”
“Reach out as I reach out to you!”
“Grasp on to me!”
Each one of us can come.
For…
2. Each one of us has access to Jesus.
No one has to be left out.
It is a universal invitation.
If “anyone” desires to drink they may.
There are no ethnic, intellectual, or social qualifications.
You just come…
ILL Notebook: Invitation (wrong number)
When Elsie Wagner and her husband were in town shopping, they ran into some friends who invited their whole family to have dinner with them that evening. Elsie said she would check with the others and call to confirm plans.
Later Elsie phoned to say that there would be five of them coming for dinner at six o’clock. At the other end of the line, there was an ominous silence. "Have I got the wrong number?" Elsie asked.
"I sure hope so," came the reply.
When you connect with Jesus, there will be no wrong number.
There will be no ominous silence.
You are welcome.
You are invited to come.
This brings us to…
II. The second course of action is to GULP.
But we must mention at this point that there is one condition.
You have to drink.
You have to accept the invitation.
You see…
1. We can satisfy thirst if we drink.
If I stand here thirsty, with a glass of water in my hand, and I don’t drink it, what good is the glass of water?
We must take it, bring it to our lips, and drink.
We need to gulp it down, if you will.
We will not be satisfied until we consume it.
The great thing about what Jesus offers is that He will never run dry.
He will always have more than we need.
We also don’t have to wait in line (like waiting for a drink at a fountain).
It is always available, for…
2. Jesus desires to fill our emptiness.
As human beings we have many innate drives.
It is how we survive and exist.
We have a drive to fill our stomachs.
We get hungry.
We even have a sexual drive that God has given us.
But, as I mentioned before, the drive for thirst is all-consuming.
When we are thirsty, we cannot get it out of our mind.
This concept of thirst is used to describe the emptiness of our souls.
For each one of us has a sense of being driven and a chronic restlessness.
We become dry, weary and torn.
Because no matter what we have or what we do, we are incomplete.
Our lives are not perfect.
We have times of regret, shame and rejection.
It is away from this that Jesus invites us to and tells us to drink.
It is from this that Jesus wants to save us.
He wants to believe and fill us with Himself.
This now brings us to…
III. The third course of action is to GUSH.
Here we find Jesus probably quoting from the prophet Isaiah (58:11 or 44:3-4) to demonstrate that the water is to make a difference in us.
For…
1. We are filled with water that never abates.
It never stops.
It keeps going.
When we are filled with the water Jesus offers, it does not stop with us.
It gushes out of us!
It keeps coming and touches those that we touch.
We become, in effect, a former thirsty person showing thirsty people how to get a drink.
For…
2. We have living water that gives us power, joy and hope.
I believe that the promise is not only that we will be satisfied, but that we will be satisfying.
We should and will become a blessing to others.
We will share the power.
We will share the joy.
We will share the hope.
APPLICATION:
So let me ask you…are you satisfied?
In recent years, there have been some advertising campaigns that have spoken to satisfaction.
For a while, when you watched a Snickers ad, it said, “It really satisfies.”
Of if you watched a Gatorade commercial, you would hear, “Gatorade is thirst aid for that deep down body thirst.”
There are products out there that advertise satisfaction.
They promise it because…
1. We are surrounded by discontentment.
In his book Sahara Unveiled, William Langewiesche tells the story of an Algerian named Lag Lag and a companion whose truck broke down while crossing the desert:
They nearly died of thirst during the three weeks they waited before being rescued. As their bodies dehydrated, they became willing to drink anything in hopes of quenching their terrible thirst. The sun forced them into the shade under the truck, where they dug a shallow trench. Day after day they lay there. They had food, but did not eat, fearing it would magnify their thirst. Dehydration, not starvation, kills wanderers in the desert, and thirst is the most terrible of all human sufferings.
Physiologists…use Greek-based words to describe stages of human thirst. For example, the Sahara is dipsogenic, meaning "thirst provoking."
In Lag Lag’s case, they might say he progressed from eudipsia, "ordinary thirst," through bouts of hyperdipsia, meaning "temporary intense thirst," to polydipsia, "sustained excessive thirst." Polydipsia means the kind of thirst that drives one to drink anything. There are specialized terms for such behavior, including uriposia, the drinking of urine, and hemoposia, the drinking of blood.
For word enthusiasts, this is heady stuff. Nevertheless, the lexicon has not kept up with technology. I have tried, and cannot coin a suitable word for the drinking of rusty radiator water. Radiator water is what Lag Lag and his assistant started into when good drinking water was gone. In order to survive, they were willing to drink, in effect, poison.
You know, the world is full of things that do not satisfy.
In fact, they are really poison.
Ask the drug addict.
Ask the alcoholic.
Ask the gambler.
Ask the person addicted to sex.
Ask the materialist always looking for more.
Money, sex and power have never quenched our spiritual thirst.
They are dangerous substitutes for the “living water” Jesus promises.
And all they do is ultimately kill us.
Unless, we have Jesus, it is a life of confusion.
Because since we have diseased spiritual taste buds, every choice we make is wrong!
I think we need to understand this about ourselves…
2. Our greatest need is significance.
We possess significance when we realize that we are made by God and made for God.
We are designed for a personal intimate relationship with Him.
This is our most crucial longing, even if we don’t see it at first.
Yet, God continues to frustrate us so that we will understand our deepest need.
John Piper puts it this way…
“He frustrates the human race again and again. He causes every wreath to wither, every gold cup to tarnish, every muscle to sag, every face to wrinkle, every sexual exploit to go sour, every sin to sting, until we have put Him off too long.”
He wants us for Himself.
Everything else must grow dim for us to fully understand.
Everything else must fail for us to fully experience the blessing.
You know, we have the privilege here of experiencing Niagara Falls from time to time.
I am always impressed as I stand at the edge of the cascading water.
There is so much of it.
And it is never exhausted.
It just keeps coming.
In the same way…
3. We are designed to be fruitful (Ephesians 5:18).
Paul tells us to…
…be filled with the Spirit…
More accurately, “be being filled.”
The water is a picture of the Holy Spirit in us.
And just as water produces fruitfulness, so does the Spirit of God satisfies us and enables us to bear fruit.
We are to become, as the text alludes, like a mighty river that flows and touches others.
My deepest soul-thirst is not just to be a receptacle, but to be a river.
And you know what?
Rivers can’t be held back!
Try to stop the Amazon, the Nile or the Mississippi.
No, they can’t be held back.
And neither should we.
Just as rivers are places of life, we are never more alive than when the Spirit is flowing through us.
Have you noticed this as well?
Rivers change things!
They don’t keep the status quo.
They constantly clean their environment.
They change course.
They change the depth and run deeper.
Sometimes, they even overflow the banks.
There is always progress.
There is always a pushing forward.
Rivers describe adequately what it is like to be a Christian, a person with their spiritual thirst quenched.
You are designed to be satisfied.
Are you?
BENEDICTION: [Counselors are ]
Come to Jesus…as you are and see Him as He is; He invites you to come; He desires you to come; He holds out His hand for you to grasp…
Believe in Jesus…take Him and drink Him in; know the blessing of His Presence in Your life; for when You have His Presence, it is just the beginning of a life of satisfaction…
Share Jesus…take the blessing of satisfaction and be satisfying to others; share the good news, for it is Jesus that meets that deep down soul thirst.
Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy—to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.
