John 7:37-44

Glad that you're here. Thanks for joining us.

We continue through the Gospel of John.

We're in the seventh chapter, the 37th verse,

and we continue,

we continue in.

Interesting.

We'll talk about this, but this is one of those passages.

John does some every now and then.

John throws you a curveball.

You have to kind of stop and think what happened.

And so I think maybe there's a little bit of that here,

but let's jump in 37 and we'll come back and discuss

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.

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.

So on one

hand, this passage is a kind of culmination, harkening

back to the conversation we saw Jesus and the woman at the well.

Jesus now makes a public proclamation.

He has said this to the woman.

Now he says a similar thing to all the crowds, to any who will listen.

Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, right?

I am the living water, and let the one who believes in me drink

the one we've seen that this is very kind of common language for John.

The believer drinks life, receives life.

The thirsty looks to Jesus and is quenched.

And then Jesus quotes the scripture

out of the believer's heart flow rivers of living water.

I think up until then you would say

that this passage makes perfect sense, fits in the context, and then John

throws in this kind of nugget the spirit which believers in him were to receive.

For as of yet there was no spirit

because Jesus was not yet glorified. Now,

this is a this is a tricky sounding passage

because if you are

of familiar with Christian language and Christian doctrine,

you know about the Trinity, the father, the son, and the spirit.

And what John could be taken to say here

is that Jesus somehow creates the spirit.

The spirit does not yet exist.

Obviously our people have not read it that way.

Presbyterians, and I believe every other Christian has read this instead.

To say that Jesus hasn't shared the spirit yet.

The spirit has not yet been unleashed in the world

through Jesus death and resurrection.

Obviously, the Old Testament talks about God's Spirit.

The idea of spirit is familiar and comfortable in the Bible.

This language,

we think, indicates instead a

it is more about the activity of the spirit

than the existence of the spirit, though the way that it's written,

in the way that it's translated make that a little problematic.

But what is clear?

I think, Michael, if anything is clear about this passage,

what seems to be clear is that John intrinsically ties

the work of Jesus to believers receiving the spirit.

That part, I think, is non-negotiable.

I think it's really helpful to understand our context.

So remember where this is happening.

This is happening in the midst of the Festival

of the Tabernacles, which is, by the way, a harvest festival.

And there's a practice that happens in the midst of it, where the high priest

goes to a pool and grabs water and brings it in to the temple.

There's this rich symbolism and theological

meaning already embedded inside this practice.

So if you have that information in your back pocket and you think, okay,

now Jesus is coming in the midst of a tradition in which

there's already this rich theological imagery, and Jesus is then

utilizing that context in that moment to say this about himself.

Then maybe this begins to take on a little bit more nuance and texture.

Right?

This idea that on the last day,

the great day, John goes out of his way to say of the festival.

That is when Jesus says that it is not the water brought into the temple,

which is thought of as the the place where God resides.

No, it's the water that comes from Christ himself, the one who nourishes the soul.

This is another example, Clint, and I think that John does this over

and over again, and the temptation of this is that we maybe become numb to it.

These kind of it really

jarring theological claims that Jesus makes in the gospel.

If you're a believer in Christ, if you've grown up, we're now

2000 years beyond the reception of this text.

If you hear this, you may say, yeah, I get it, I did confirmation.

Let's move on.

That in the moment in which Jesus is

saying this, this is an unbelievably heretical statement,

a challenging word in the early church that received it.

This would have been an amazing kind

of theological turning of expectation.

It would have been looking at us saying that some might have even had

some experience of, all the way up to 70 A.D.

that practice was still happening.

So, you know, there may have been some personal connection to it

to then see it turned and reimagined in light of who Christ is,

that there is really deep and powerful theological value here.

That being said, as we keep going through, I think that words

like what we have at the end cleansed.

And you brought it out and I won't linger here, but this idea of

of the spirit being given up, this is the kind of one sentence.

Statement in

Scripture where people can sometimes get themselves bound up like a pretzel.

If you are looking to create a systematic theology based upon one verse,

you're you're almost often out of your depth of field.

And I think in this case, it's likely best interpreted something

along the lines of that

the Spirit of God in that been shed abroad in the Christian community, in the way

that we understand it, or that we haven't had that access to moment yet.

Yeah.

However, you might want to see that read.

I personally don't believe that that's a thing worth losing sleep over.

When you look at the weight of the rest of the new Testament.

But certainly there's

been many things and scholars and people who have written and puzzled and,

and thought their way through that. Klint.

Yeah, I'm not sure that you could equate here

be an interesting conversation amongst those scholars.

Could you equate the idea of Holy Spirit

with the word spirit here, that John has in mind?

And I, I, I'm not sure what they would make of that in my Bible.

Spirit is capitalized.

I'd argue possibly that it shouldn't be,

but but again, rather than get lost there,

I think it's fine to notice this and, you know, pay attention

to the fact that it's interesting and maybe even challenging.

But I think rather than get sidetracked, we ought to see what is behind it.

And I think what that is, Michael, is that John here

is convinced,

and I appreciate that he doesn't use the word crucify.

He uses the word glorified that the glorification of Jesus, the

the death and resurrection of Jesus

unleashes something upon the church.

And he calls that thing

spirit.

Later will read the word advocate there.

Even the the book of acts is clear that there is a coming of the spirit.

There is something that happens

in the aftermath of the glorification of Jesus

that will guide the faith and guide the faith community.

And here we have this shorthand word spirit for that.

But I think rather than, yeah,

rather than read this literally and say that that spirit doesn't yet exist,

clearly John has in mind that it just hasn't done its work yet.

It hasn't.

It is not until the glorification of Christ

that that spirit comes and does what it intends to do.

And I just, I think, you know, it's a

it's a messy sentence that I think you're right, could easily sidetrack someone

if they if they weren't aware of the the broader conversation.

Well, we'll push on to the next part of this because I think it's important.

I just want to set it up here.

I do think that there's a functional nature to this comment,

because we're going to see how the spirit here is immediately

followed by belief and followed by what people how people respond to Christ.

And I don't think that's accidental.

So let let's read this and maybe it'll shed some light on where we were.

Yeah.

Verse 40, when they heard these words,

some in the crowd said, this is really the prophet.

Others said, this is the Messiah.

But some ask, surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he?

Has not the Scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David

and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived.

So there was a division in the crowd because of him.

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

So, yeah.

So this conversation occasions this moment

where some see something admirable in Jesus,

some see something even more than that.

They see something divine.

They see Messiah, the deliverer, the Redeemer, and others say,

but that can't be right, because the Redeemer

comes from Bethlehem, descended from David. Now,

John has not made a big deal of this.

We know from other gospels that Jesus could check those boxes.

Interestingly enough, John doesn't make that argument here.

John,

tell me if you agree with this. Michael.

John seems

it seems to me that proof for Jesus is unnecessary.

In other words, proving that Jesus is in fact from Bethlehem.

So he checks that box and he is in fact in the line of David.

So he he fits that criteria as well.

I don't think John is moved by that.

Those things.

I think John presents Jesus as the person Jesus.

And I think he completely believes that that is enough

for others to believe he I.

It doesn't seem to me that John needs extraneous

or other outside circumstances to validate Jesus at all.

And and so the choice that we see in this text is, again,

I think the choice that the Gospel of John provides us on nearly every page.

What do you see in Jesus, and do you believe in him or not?

I think that is a way of even going back to that previous verse.

And 39, Clint, and just pointing out

that the supremacy of Christ is so much and so great.

Per your comment, that when he is with us, we don't need the spirit.

When Jesus is in flesh and on earth, all you need to do is to see him.

And you've seen God incarnate.

And so the same here, this idea that people would be looking

for some of these check

mark items that they could tease out is this man actually the Messiah?

No, the answer is if you look at him and see him for who he is,

if you see him truthfully, then you will see God in flesh.

John has no desire to argue that with you.

Either you believe it and therefore you can see it, or you don't.

And quite frankly, the way that John tells this story, we pointed out

numerous times now look how often these words are coming from here.

Verse four, the the crowd that the the group of people.

Right.

John is not very charitable in that sense.

There are some who will believe

and there will be many, maybe even a plurality who will not.

There will be some who see, and then there will be many who will not.

And that doesn't surprise John.

And in fact, as Jesus presents to those, the people who don't see

tend to not be value neutral, they tend to be angry.

Here, once again, there's conversation about wanting to arrest him in verse 44.

It's just Jesus does create a kind of

pull out popularity in his encounters with people.

And I just think as we see it here,

John has

no interest in giving us genealogies.

He has no interest in sort of laying out for us.

Why this makes sense.

And like the Old Testament, John wants you to see Jesus.

And I think John believes if you've seen Jesus, then you have enough.

And if you have not seen Jesus, if you've looked at him

but not seen who he actually is, then, then John has really no quarrel with you

and the crowd most often in the stories doesn't

respond neutrally, they just respond with anger and violence.

So Jesus is upsetting the apple cart and they want to put that down.

Yeah, I want to.

I want to jump on something there, Michael.

But first I want to just read this verse 43, because it's exactly as you said.

So there was a division in the crowd because of him. And

I think,

John, among all the gospel writers, this is true in all the Gospels.

Jesus has brings division.

He even says something to the effect in some of the Gospels.

But but here John is seems to be most comfortable with that.

And along the lines of what you're saying,

I want to jump to very close to the end of this gospel.

Near the end of this book, John is going to say,

if if I could tell you all the things Jesus did,

there wouldn't be enough books in the world to contain them.

But these have been written so that you may believe.

And so keep in mind,

I think with that, with that in the background, keep in mind

that what John writes, he he writes with this idea

that it's enough to bring you to believe

that you know, it is enough to show you why you should make the choice

to believe he he's not giving even by his own account.

He's not giving an exhaustive list of every reason.

But he firmly believes what he's showing about Jesus.

He is enough.

If if I wrote down all the signs, there wouldn't be enough paper.

But I wrote down these signs so that you can believe.

And I think that's a helpful framework

to unpack what John, I think believes that he's doing.

I might even push that just a little bit further.

I think in a gospel like Luke, you might think to yourself that you're

reading an ancient approximation to a history book.

I can see how you get there.

But this is true of every gospel.

But John exemplifies it, I think, in the most clear way.

The Gospels are written with a point in mind.

There's an argument being made here.

There's what we call in the Christian faith revelation being offered.

And and when you're reading a gospel, you're not just reading

a play by play filled with dates, times, and places.

Those things are they're they're sketched out of the story that Jesus lived.

And there's good reason to believe that they're coming from sources

related to what Jesus actually did and said in the places he actually was,

that it's not that they're not historical.

What is is that they are written in the way that they are

with a particular goal in mind, and the goal is faith.

And for John, it's not just to believe

with your mind, it is to be changed in your action.

Is is to become disciple and is to follow in his way.

It's for the way of Christ to redefine find your worldly values.

And I think that it can easily be missed if you're reading the Bible

to to just sort of get some basic who did what, when and where.

What you miss is.

This book is written intentionally for the specific purpose

of allowing you to have what you need to see Jesus Christ for who he is.

And so the way that these stories are told, how they're compiled,

how they're pieced together is a part of that argument.

And I just think it's worth noting here,

with all of the themes that we repeat over and over and over again about the crowds

who miss it, about the revelation of Christ, about the fact that he is God.

And John is doing that with an incredible level of effectiveness

in weaving those threads all together consistently throughout the book.

The question is not was it well written?

The question is, is it compelling for you?

Does it do within you what John hopes

it will do and ultimately, you and I

and everyone who's read this book for thousands of years have been presented.

That question and the response naturally follows whatever that is for you.

Yeah.

Some of those, some of you listening know this, but Michael,

we had Michael and I, we had a funeral this morning here in the church,

and I'm struck by the idea that every time we do a funeral,

there are

different belief systems that work in the sanctuary.

In every single funeral, there's somebody sitting out there

who thinks, well, dad is dead.

You live, you die.

That's it. Right?

And they're saying goodbye.

And at every single funeral, there are some number of other people

who believe there's more to the story than that.

There's something else at work.

There is some hope and promise beyond this life for the next.

And that is the difference.

We see that there's a division because of him.

He is. No he isn't.

We believe.

We don't believe.

John has put that in front of us multiple times,

and he will continue to do it, because I think for John,

that's the fundamental reality that Jesus creates.

What do we make of this man?

He's from Galilee. But he does miracles.

He did the all of these various threads

that John is weaving together all bring us to that point of choice.

We see it in the characters, and ultimately I think we see it

in the intention behind the entire story, the entire gospel.

It's well said.

I certainly hope that there's something in this that's encouraging,

challenging for you as you study the Gospel of John yourself.

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