Thursday, August 12

Yesterday James instructed us that the solution to keeping our hearts pure is fresh water, so today, let’s look at the source for fresh water.

37On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. 38Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." 39By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. - John 7.37-39

Verse 37 gives us the context we need to fully understand what is going on here in this passage. It says “On the last and greatest day of the Feast.” The feast referred to here is the Feast of Tabernacles when they would celebrate GOD’s provision for Israel as they wandered in the desert for 40 years. And on the last day of this feast they would have this elaborate ceremony having to do with water to pray for rain for the next year. In this moment, standing in the Temple on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus is claiming to be the messiah and he is filling up what that means by this celebration about water.

They were performing this water ceremony in order to pray and ask GOD for the much needed rains to come so that next year’s crop could grow.

So for all these people, rain or water equalled salvation. And what Jesus is doing is so brilliant. He is doing the same thing he did when he claimed to be the Temple, when he claimed to be living bread–He is filling up people’s concept of who the messiah is, of who he is, by using these common religious and cultural symbols of the day.

And so he is claiming to be the water of salvation-messiah. And he says “if anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink.”

What Jesus is offering is permanent salvation, water from a pure source. Now, there is some debate as to exactly how this passage should be translated from the original Greek. The reason is because there is no punctuation, or even spaces in the original Greek manuscripts. When they wrote stuff down they just wrote it down as one long line of text. So you can see why there might be some debate every once and a while on how exactly to translate something into modern English.

The text quoted above is from the NIV, but the New Living Translation translates it this way:

37 On the last day, the climax of the festival, Jesus stood and shouted to the crowds, “Anyone who is thirsty may come to me! 38 Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart.’” - John 7.37-38 (NLT)

For reasons we don’t have time to go into here, nor would many of you be interested to read about grammar and punctuation, I think this is a better translation of the passage. Basically, the difference between these two translations is that the NIV explains that streams of living water will flow from within the person who drinks of the water that Jesus offers and the NLT translates it as water flowing from the Messiah himself. In light of the context I think the NLT makes more sense.

So back to our core discussion here... Jesus is claiming to be the water of salvation-messiah. And he says “if anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink because streams of living water flow from within me.

And so what Jesus offers is permanent salvation, water from a pure source, himself.

Now, there are several implications to this, but I want to look at one in particular. Look back at verse 39.

What John is pointing to is that the agent who is responsible for continually freeing us from our sin is the Holy Spirit. So I want you to wrestle these two questions (it will be very helpful if you look at the passages related to the each question).

1. What happens when we drink of the water Christ offers [2 Corinthians 5.17-21]?
2. What are the implications of receiving the Holy Spirit [Galatians 5.16-26]?

Here’s what happens when we drink of the water Christ offers. The gospel begins to break through our compulsiveness to sin. The Holy Spirit begins to free us. And the passage in 2 Corinthians that you looked at says that GOD begins to view us like we are perfectly clean because of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

And here’s what this means for us today, tonight, tomorrow. We are not a slave to it anymore. Now, of course this will be fully realized when we are in heaven, but we can begin to live like it now. And that’s what the Holy Spirit is attempting to do in our lives right now, help us to live like we were meant to. Not only does the Spirit free us from our compulsion to sin, but it helps us live as though we are this new creation.

There is something else I think these passages help us to realize, that there is overflow. The Fruit of the Spirit is the overflow of what GOD is doing in our lives as we drink of the water offered to us by Christ, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self control will flow out of us.

Remember what James taught us: what goes in is what comes out.

Ken Lippold