In this time of voluntary lockdown (house arrest), most of us have time on our hands we’ve never had before and how we handle this unexpected difficulty can be a challenge. For the first time in the United States, our churches are forced to close, our favorite set down restaurant has been turned into a carryout only and when in public we have to stand six feet apart and smile at our friends even though they can’t see it because a mask covering our mouth and nose we are also forced to wear.

How’s all that make you feel? … Scared? … Worried … or even a little mad? Here we can walk on the moon, live in space for a year (talk about lockdown) and we all know big brother has his eye on all of us, but they can’t find a cure for the common cold much less eradicate COVID 19.  Are we being manipulated? Hmmm … Got you thinking? … Good! You’re even a little mad, I mean those Sadducees and Pharisees … whoops! I mean those politicians and, and what? Do we protest (how’s that working so far?).  Even though we may feel like the government is our enemy about now, ( and they may well be … I don’t know.) How Did Jesus handle His enemies?

Come on now, you’re a Christian … aren’t you? Let’s get a little biblical insight into how we’re doing by looking at the living word. Turn your bibles to John 7:25-39. Is Jesus protesting, yelling, and demanding His rights or is he making an offer of another way?

And I hope you see that part of the answer to whether he is the kind of person you might want to come to is that he is speaking these words to his enemies. He is issuing a totally open-ended invitation to everyone in the sound of his voice, and in the sound of mine, to come to him and drink. And the only qualification he mentions is thirst. Verse 37: “If anyone (anyone!) — any Pharisee, any chief priest, any officer trying to arrest me, any offended person — if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”

Do you remember how near the end of his life Jesus looked out over this city and cried,

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! (Matthew 23:37)

How often I stretched out my hands to you! This is one of those times. How many times have you heard him say this to you in your life? “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” Amazing. He is saying this to his enemies. And he is saying to you.

What Coming to Him Means

And what would it mean if you came?

Let’s answer that by looking at five things: the thirst, the coming to drink, the rivers that flow from the heart, the reference to the Spirit coming after Jesus is glorified, and the fact that this was prophesied in Scripture.

1. Three Things Implied in Thirsting

Verse 37: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” It seems to me that there are three wonderful things implied in the words “if anyone thirsts.”

First is that the gift of the water is free. The condition you must meet is need. “If anyone thirsts.” That’s the condition. And the action you must take is to drink. Receive the gift. There is no thought here of earning or meriting. Anyone. Anyone who knows his own thirst is invited.

Second, the human soul has thirst. We know he is not talking about physical thirst. That’s clear. But what he is saying is that the soul has something like physical thirst. When you go without water your body gets thirsty. And the soul, when it goes without God, gets thirsty. Your body was made to live on water. Your soul was made to live on God.

This is the most important thing to know about yourself. You were made to live on God. You have a soul, a spirit. There is a you that is more than a body. And that you, if it does not drink from the greatness and wisdom and power and goodness and justice and holiness and love of God, will die of thirst.

Third, implied in the word “thirst” is that what Jesus offers is satisfying. The aim of all theology, all study, all biblical learning, all preaching is to spread the satisfying banquet for you to eat with joy, and to protect the kitchen from poison. The aim of cooking is eating. The aim of digging wells and clearing springs is drinking. Everything Jesus came to do and teach is aimed at providing the soul with food and drink that satisfy forever.

That’s what I see in the word “thirst.” The water is free. The soul has a thirst. And Jesus aims to satisfy the soul forever.

2. Three Observations About Coming to Jesus to Drink

Versed 37–38: “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.’” Three observations:

First, Jesus is what we drink. “Come to me and drink.” Jesus doesn’t just have what our souls need; he is what our souls need. Recall John 6:35, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” He is the bread of life. He is the living water. Our souls were made for Jesus. The ache in our hearts is at root an ache for Jesus. This is how the soul lives on God. It lives on Jesus.

Second, the soul can drink. It can swallow. He is speaking spiritually, not materially, when he says, “Come to me and drink.” This drinking is not something you do with your mouth and your throat. You do it with your soul. You do it spiritually. You were made to do this. You are not a mere animal. You were made for this — coming, not physically, but spiritually, to Jesus, and drinking, swallowing the water for your soul that he is.

Third, this coming and drinking are what it means to believe in Jesus. Verses 37–38: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me . . .” That last phrase is another way of saying to come and drink. Coming and drinking Jesus is what happens when we believe. It’s what belief means.

We saw it in the parallel structure of John 6:35: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” Believing on Jesus is coming to him to eat and drink for our soul’s deepest satisfaction.

So be done forever with the sad notion that saving faith — that believing in Jesus — is a mere decision to believe facts. No. It is coming to him as a feast. A treasure. A banquet. A spring in the desert when we are dying of thirst. This is what the apostle John meant when he connected believing in Jesus and receiving Jesus in John 1:12. Believing is receiving him as water, food, life for the soul.

So those three things: Jesus is the water we need, the soul does the drinking, and that is what believing means — coming to Jesus to drink for our soul’s satisfaction.

3. The Rivers That Flow from the Soul

Verse 38: “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Literally, it says, out of his belly. But the point is our inner being, call it belly, heart, soul, spirit. What does this mean?

It means that when you come to Jesus to drink, you don’t just get a single drink, but you get a spring, a fountain, a well. You get Jesus. Rivers of water will flow because a River-Maker is in you. That’s the point. You will never have to search again for a source of satisfaction for your soul. Every river that needs to flow for the joy of your soul will flow from Jesus. When you come to him, you get him. And he never leaves.

4. The Spirit of the Glorified Jesus

Verse 39: “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.”

There was an experience of the Spirit that could not be enjoyed until Jesus had died for our sins, been raised triumphant over death, and ascended to the right of the Father in glory — namely, the experience of fellowship with the Spirit of the glorified, risen Christ. This is what the Father gives to everyone who believes. The presence and power and fellowship of the Spirit of the risen and glorified Christ.

Once Jesus was with us as an incarnate man, and now he is in us by his Spirit. Listen to John 14:16–17: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”

And he is indeed in everyone who believes in Jesus. Remember what Paul said in Romans 8:9? “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” If you come to Christ to drink for your soul’s satisfaction, you get Christ. And now we see that he means: You get the Spirit — the Spirit of God and of Christ.

Christ, as the incarnate Son of God, is in heaven. We can’t see his body now. We walk by faith and not by sight. But he is in us (Romans 8:10). We have the Spirit of the risen and glorified Christ living in us. Which means Christ is in us.

5. The Witness of Scripture to the Plans of God

Verse 38 again: “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”

There are so many Old Testament texts that point to this reality. Let me give you just one. Isaiah 58:11: “You shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.”

But here is the way we should end — the really wonderful implication for us that God spoke of this reality hundreds of years before it happened. It means that God was planning this for you. God was planning to send his Son. He created you to have an unquenchable soul thirst that could draw you to him. He planned for Jesus to stand in Jerusalem, and for me to write this, and cry out: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me [Jesus] and drink.”

This is God’s invitation to you. Not just mine. Not just Jesus’s. But God’s. Come, drink, live.

That’s your answer to the times we’re living in. Our hope is in Jesus Christ, not politicians or government or man. It’s time for Ernest prayer, nor self-serving, but a prayer of repentance and of thanksgiving for a living God.

Until we get together next stay safe and live with the joy of the Lord!

My Prayer for You:   

Father, we thank you for your word and your Son. We ask you in His name to forgive us of our sins and show us the path you would have us walk. Father God, help us all to cultivate a forgiving heart. to pray for our enemies and love one another.  I pray for healing in our land and eyes to be opened. I pray that our country would turn to you and ask forgiveness and ask you to bring us back to what you want us to be.

All the praise and glory goes to you Lord, our mighty creator, and giver of all good things.

In the precious name of Jesus, we ask these things,

Amen