"Living Water" (Tolson) | John 7:37-52

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Please stand for a reading from John chapter 7, verses 37 to 52.

John 7:37–52

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.

When they heard these words, some of the people said, This really is the prophet.

Others said, This is the Christ.

But some said, Is the Christ to come from Galilee?

Has not the scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?

So there was a division among the people over him.

Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.

The officers then came to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who said to them, Why did you not bring him?

The officers answered, No one ever spoke like this man.

The Pharisees answered them, Have you also been deceived?

Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?

But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed.

Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?

They replied, Are you from Galilee too?

Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Welcome.

Welcome to Frank's.

If you're visiting with us today, we're very glad to have you.

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And if we can walk with you through life over these next four years or one year, whatever you have left, we would love to do that.

Let us know how we can serve you as a church family.

Uh, but we love having you here.

Um and again, my name's Aaron.

I don't think I told you that.

I work in the youth ministry here.

Uh let me start with just an image.

In 2012, Jose Alvaranga and Ezekiel Cordoba went out in a 23-foot fishing boat off the western coast of Mexico, and they went on a 30-hour deep-sea fishing cruise.

They caught 1,100 pounds of fish, and then a storm so violent came in that for five it blew for five days and broke their engine, broke their radio, their electronics, they were pushed out to sea.

And then they drifted for four months.

They had had to throw all the fish out of the boat during the storm.

After four months, Ezekiel passed away.

They were living off of seabirds and and raw fish and drinking the blood of turtles and the birds and trying to catch rainwater.

Ezekiel died after four months, and then Jose lived ten more months at sea.

438 days.

I think it was November uh 17th, 2012, till January 30th, 2014.

He washed up in the Marshall Islands, the longest solo survival at sea story ever recorded.

And in his account, it was some 6,700 miles they drifted.

In his account, and in so many survivor stories of being adrift at sea, the thing they talk about the most is the unique agony of being surrounded by millions of gallons of undrinkable water.

And Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, you may remember the line where the ship is stranded in the ocean, there's no wind, the sun is beating down, they've been there for days, they're out of water.

And he says, Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.

And that picture of being surrounded by endless resources that are completely useless to satisfy your greatest need.

That is what Jesus is entering into in this passage and standing before them and proclaiming something so beautiful about the spiritual longing of our souls and what heals them.

So let me pray and we're going to look at this together.

Heavenly Father, would you grant us your spirit?

That's what this is all about.

We need your spirit to see, to believe, to receive.

And you have promised it in abundance.

And say, all we need to do is hold our hands out and ask, and you will pour it out on us.

So we ask you to do that now and teach us through your word.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Alright, so we're at a pivotal point in Jesus' ministry.

This is the last great festival before he goes to the cross.

It's about six months away.

So there are three great festivals each year.

Um, the Feast of Tabernacles is one of them, or the Feast of Booths.

It's a very interesting festival.

I don't know if you understand what they do.

They would, everyone would come into the city and they would build little huts, little tents, and they were remembering the wilderness wanderings.

They would sleep in these with open view to the sky, uh, so they could see the moon and stars, and uh they would um pretend like they were reenacting the wilderness for eight days.

And each day what would happen, and every male within like 15 miles over the age of 20 was required to come, but so many more traveled.

So this is a huge gathering in Jerusalem.

Uh they uh each day what would happen is the high priest would come out of the temple with this golden pitcher, and all the priests and and scribes, everybody would follow him down, he'd go out to the pool of Siloam, he'd fill it up, they would come back in through the water gate to the temple, they would walk around the altar while everyone held up bread and and gr and uh fruit, and they would say, Give thanks to the Lord three times.

And then they would pour out the water over the altar, and someone would pour wine out as well in the ceremony, and it would pour out and go in every direction and then dissipate and be gone.

And they did that every day for seven days, and then on the eighth day, this last great day, um, they they had done this because they're doing three things.

One, they're they're looking to the past when God struck the rock in the wilderness and provided water, so God's miraculous provision there.

They're looking at the present for the harvest that they're holding up and remembering God is everything we have now is from God.

And then they're looking to the future and the promise when the Messiah will come and God will pour out his spirit in abundance on the people.

Uh and in Ezekiel 47 is one of those prophecies talking about when the water will just flow out from the temple and bring life to all around it.

And I was reading that this week, and he says, I was walking, there's the the I was being taken through this vision, and the water was ankle deep and then knee deep, then waist deep, then I could swim in it, and then the water rushed all the way to the sea, and when it hit the sea, it turned the salt water into fresh.

I love that imagery of just like the water that was undrinkable, transformed, as we spoke earlier.

So Jesus' timing, think of his timing, it's impeccable.

All this is happening, they're reenacting the wilderness.

Thousands of years of prophecy, water's being poured out, then Jesus stands up and he cries out if anyone comes to me, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

Thousands of years of prophecy, eternal will of God orchestrating this moment, experiential reenactment of wilderness dryness.

So I want to look at this in two points this morning.

How does Jesus invite us?

And then we're naturally turned to our attention to how do we respond to that invitation?

So, how does Jesus invite us?

Well, first of all, think about how being invited to something impacts you.

So imagine I came to you after church and was like, oh, hey, I uh invited some people over to lunch today.

And uh, I mean you can come too if you want.

Thanks, man.

Appreciate it.

What if I drive to your house and I give you a written invitation?

We want to have you over.

I remember what you said about your dietary stuff.

I found the perfect meal.

I've been smoking this meat overnight.

We would love to have you come share a meal with us.

You see how different that is?

Well, with that in mind, I want you to look at Jesus here in his posture.

He does something that he hasn't really done.

He stands up before them and he cries out.

There's a sense of urgency in this, the last gathering, it's the last day they're all about to leave.

And he cries out.

Most of his teaching was done sitting, speaking, conversationally, and even in the temple he would go and sit and he would speak.

But now in a rare moment, he stands up, he cries out before this gathering.

And I hope you can hear the urgency in his voice and the compassion in his eyes that uh a death he knows is coming, that he's told the disciples about.

Even now, actually, guards are coming to arrest him.

But ignoring all of that, he stands up and he says, All of this points to me.

The reason I've come.

I am living water that never fails.

The healing, the forgiveness that you are longing for is what and what you're desperately searching for has come.

So it's filled with passion, it's filled with urgency, but it's also simple.

He invites anyone who thirsts.

And thirst is a desperate need.

Like you can be hungry, you can endure that for a while.

It's annoying, it's uncomfortable.

But thirst is a desperate need.

All of the needs kind of fade into obscurity when you get really thirsty.

I have a friend who works in an office in downtown Boston.

He's trying to get into running.

He's run a few times, and uh he said, I was out on the Charles River Esplanade, and I was running and I got my three miles in, and man, I just felt good.

So I was like, let's see if I can do five.

I did five, and then I was like, I might as well do a 10K, and then I've never gone over seven before, so I kept going, going.

He's like, let's might do 10.

Once I'm here, I'll never be this far again.

I might as well do a half marathon.

He ran a whole half marathon at like a 12-minute pace.

And he like had no water, no nutrition.

And he said, when I finally stopped running, I was so overcome with thirst.

Like, I had no shirt on, I had sweat through my shorts, I'm kind of a hairy person, and I burst into a restaurant off the Charles River.

And I was like, please, the people like trying not to touch them like, you can't come in here.

And he said, I got almost on my knees, like, please, I am so thirsty.

And so they gave him water.

He said, It's the sweetest thing I've ever tasted.

But Spurgeon says, thirst is the absence of a necessary, a painful need, an emptiness, a conscious need to a painful degree.

But Jesus is talking about our spiritual thirst, our souls, the awareness of our inability to get rid of our sin, the desire to be completely renewed in your spirit, the longing to be right with God.

I wonder if you've ever experienced that type of thirst in your soul where you've run and run after something, pushing the inline further and further.

If I just get to there, if I just get to there, until it left you completely empty, thirsting.

And then all of a sudden you don't even care what you look like anymore.

You care about social norms and pride.

You just want your soul to be healed.

David, in Psalm 63, he's in the wilderness of Judah when he writes this.

Oh God, you are my God.

Earnestly I seek you.

My soul thirsts for you.

My flesh faints for you.

As in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

David is talking about spiritual thirst.

Something every human experience.

We try to satisfy with earthly things, relationships, romances, talents, trophies.

When we're young, we call it finding the thing we're good at.

You know, if I can just find the thing I'm good at, then I'll have an identity.

Athlete, academic, um, scholarship.

You know, if I can just be gorgeous, handsome, then I won't be thirsty anymore.

But Psalm 73 says there's nothing on this earth I desire besides you.

That means there's nothing that heals, nothing that can satisfy apart from him.

Our souls thirst for God.

And Jesus is inviting anyone who thirsts, anyone longing for forgiveness, longing to be made right, anyone aware that all the water around us does not satisfy, that he's the only fountain.

I love it.

It shows that Jesus sees us as we are, he knows us.

So he moves heaven and earth and comes to us.

That leads to our second point.

How do we respond to Jesus' invitation?

And I want to look first at the responses in these texts that obscure our thirst from finding its only hope.

So the first one is kind of it's a lack of knowledge.

And look at the nuance here.

In verse 41, it says, they say, Is the Christ to come from Galilee?

Has not the scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David?

Comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?

Do you notice what they're saying?

They're actually right.

Jesus is supposed to come from Bethlehem.

So they believe a true thing about Jesus, but they're told a false thing.

And it actually becomes the stumbling block.

So a false thing from the world about Jesus obscures something that is really true, which they actually believed.

Let me try to illustrate this in a way that I see it currently.

Something I've seen over and over again is people who reject Jesus because of a view of Christianity that could come right out of an episode of The Simpsons.

It's like this portrayal of Christianity is hypocritical and fake, judgmental, self-righteous, proud.

They say, I do not want to follow Jesus because I don't want to be any of those things.

And to be fair, a lot of people have claimed the name of Christ, and even followers of Christ struggle with some of those sins in this world, myself included.

And so, but if you look at Jesus' life, listen to his words, these are the things that broke his heart the most.

These are the things he most often spoke against.

These are the things he he stood up against and said, This cannot be for the people of God.

So that means if hypocrisy in a church makes your heart sick, if pride and self-righteousness, a harsh judgmental spirit repel you, you're actually more like Jesus than less.

You actually see the world through his eyes.

You understand what the gospel should do on a soul.

Like that shouldn't be the reason, a stumbling block.

That should be, that should move you towards him.

You are more in line with him than you are against him.

And believing a true and beautiful thing about Jesus can actually be a stumbling block for some.

But let's look at another response.

We see the guards, the officers who were sent to arrest Jesus, they they show up empty-handed.

And that must have been the most gutsy thing they had done in their lives up to that point.

To defy orders and return in disobedience?

And I can see the Pharisees like slamming their hands, standing up, spit coming out of their mouths, eyes wild with fury.

Why did you not bring him in?

Their plan is falling apart before them.

But the guard's replies is so revealing.

Look at this.

How were they able to deny orders and risk their jobs?

They say, no one ever spoke like this man.

In the history of people that we've heard using this spoken language, no one has spoken with the wisdom and authority that Jesus does.

And you notice what the Pharisees don't ask?

They don't say, wait, what?

What did he say?

What was this thing that no other human has ever uttered?

Please tell us.

Like, anytime I've ever gone to anyone and said, I just heard the most amazing TED talk.

Like, this is the wisest thing.

They're like, oh, cool.

No, they're like, what was it?

Can you send me the link?

Tell me about it.

What did the Pharisees say?

Look at their response.

Instead of engagement, they attack them.

They attack their intellect.

Have you also been deceived?

And then they say, have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?

So see what they're doing.

First, they're arrogantly dismissing them as deceived fools.

They don't address the content and life of Jesus, but they summarily dismiss them as idiots.

And then they claim this they claim the company of all intellectuals.

You see what's happening?

They're essentially saying, has any of the educated class ever believed in him?

Have any of the social elites ever believed in him?

So they're gathering that all people who are smart deny Jesus.

So I wonder if you've ever had your faith summarily dismissed as naive or old-fashioned, as an opiate for the masses or a crutch for the weak.

There's no engagement or discussion of the life and teachings of Jesus, simple dismissal from a posture of intellectual superiority.

That's been happening for 2,000 years.

The History Channel has a fantastic 20-episode documentary of World War II.

It's actually produced and narrated by Tom Hanks.

And they tell the story of Germany's invasion of Russia.

It was the spring of 1941, and these warnings are coming into the Kremlin to Joseph Stalin's desk.

The first one came from his own spy in Tokyo, his personal spy, sends a warning, dismissed.

Then German divisions start amassing along the border.

And then the Luftwaffe reconnaissance planes are starting to fly over Soviet airspace and map it out.

And then all the German diplomats in Moscow quietly move their families out.

After all of this, he gets a letter from Winston Churchill warning him.

Then Franklin Roosevelt warns him.

And in response to all of that, he says, that's just British provocation.

Hitler writes me letters all the time.

We made a deal together.

Then in the last 10 days, they uh Soviet intelligence named the exact or near exact date 47 times.

And he said he did nothing, and three million German troops crossed the border in the largest ground invasion in history on June 22nd.

The evidence wasn't missing, only the will to believe it in the historian, and it makes this reflection.

You can get all the intelligence in the world, but if you are predisposed not to believe it, it doesn't make any difference.

Our text ends with Nicodemus.

He's quietly becoming one of my favorite people in scripture as we study the Gospel of John.

But Nicodemus, who you remember, he'd watch Jesus' life, he'd listened to his teachings.

He was compelled to go with him with his questions.

Though he knew it might change his mind, he knew it might cause him to accept a truth that would turn his life upside down.

But Nicodemus can't remain silent.

Remember, he's an authority and a Pharisee.

He's an insider.

And he speaks out.

He says, Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?

So remember, if he was someone who's been in the room with the Pharisees all along, he's making an accusation here.

They have not listened to what he has said.

They have not learned what he is doing.

They haven't given Jesus a hearing.

And the response of the leaders is dripping with irony.

They say, search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.

So outside of the fact that the prophet Had come from Galilee, Jonah, Nahum, maybe Elijah, they're demanding that Nicodemus do the one thing they weren't willing to do: to search and to see.

So Tim Keller once said that so many want an airtight argument for Christianity.

But he says, God hasn't given us an airtight argument, but an airtight person.

The person and the work of Jesus Christ, the perfect life of Jesus, the innocent death and his powerful resurrection are undeniable proof that Jesus is the Son of God slain for sinners.

So if your heart has ever been stirred by the person of Jesus, but then some sort of uh something stalls you out.

Maybe like, oh, I remember what my high school teacher said about Christianity.

Or my college professor, I saw that TikTok video that Christianity is really like this.

Or maybe it's more social.

The guys I play golf with would mock me mercilessly.

My best friend from college would never understand if I started to believe this.

The invitation is to put all of that aside and take your doubts, take your life to Jesus, take your questions to him, to search and to see.

Let his word answer your doubts, let his life speak to who he is.

Like Nicodemus to sit honestly at his feet, ready to listen to who he is and why he came.

Richard Phillips writes that unlike so many others, Nicodemus humbled himself.

He came for an open-minded consideration of God's word.

And out of his personal experience with Jesus, Nicodemus found life moving in his soul.

In the end, we see him make a full break with pride and unbelief coming to Jesus in the shadow of the cross.

It was in 1930, there's a London advertising man named Albert Ross.

Albert Ross was a skeptic.

He was in a time of skeptics, and he wanted to end the Christian debate forever.

And so he set out to write a book and he picked the title of the book before he even had any evidence.

He was going to call it Jesus, the last phase.

And so he's going to explore the resurrection, explore the person of Jesus.

He wanted to strip away the miracle of the resurrection and expose Jesus as an ordinary man underneath it all.

And then as he began to research and study, there's his historical critical scholarship, and he said, wait, the trial, the tomb, the guard, this isn't adding up, the frightened friends who turned into martyrs.

And in the end, he said, the book would never be written.

And instead, under the name Frank Morrison, he wrote instead a book he titled, Who Moved the Stone?

A defense of the resurrection.

The story he'd come to bury ended up being the story that he had to tell.

Some one said the detective came for a corpse but found the Lord of life.

Y'all, we heard testimony last week from Joe Edwards that while in prison he took a Bible so he could argue with the Christians and get them riled up.

And he didn't, he said, I didn't get past the story of Nicodemus in John 3 before Jesus had captured my heart.

And there's so many stories like these.

The invitation this morning is to search and to see.

I invite you to look at the person of Jesus who stood up before those who wanted to take his life.

He looked out at the crowd, he said, on the last day before they left, he said, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

And the next time, when will be the next time they see him in this posture?

Arms outstretched, tears in his eyes, crying out, he'll be on the cross, bearing our sins.

And what does he say in that moment?

He says, I thirst.

So we will never thirst again.

He says, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Calling out the very thing he came to provide us.

And then he says, Finally, it is finished.

And he gives up his spirit so that the spirit would be poured out on us.

And then his side was pierced.

Blood and water pours out like the water and wine poured out every day at that feast of tabernacles.

Also he could offer to us, if anyone thirsts, come to me and drink.

Whoever believes in me, out of you will flow rivers of living water.

Let me pray.

Father, the picture of Jesus who's come from heaven to earth at such a moment in time, so passionately and clearly reveal the invitation, the door you have opened, that we might receive full forgiveness.

Lord, may we see it.

May we search and see and come to Jesus with our questions.

May we find the Lord of life.

We thank you for this passage.

We thank you for your work in us here now as we worship in response.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.