You don’t need an app for it. There’s no take-home test to help you determine if you test positive for it. You don’t need to schedule an appointment with your doctor to confirm it for you. You know when you’re thirsty. It’s not difficult to tell. Your body recognizes its need to be hydrated because it can tell when you’re depleted. It knows when you’re lacking.
You also know what to do when you’re getting those signals. When your sweaty body craves something to guzzle, when you’ve been snacking on something salty, or when something just feels off and you realize you have hardly had any water all day, you know just what to do: get a drink. You provide your body with what was lacking, and it is satisfied. The experience of thirst is common to all people. Everyone knows what it’s like to be thirsty, to lack hydration; everyone knows what it feels like to address that thirst; and everyone knows the satisfaction that comes along with getting a drink.
So it doesn’t surprise us at all to see Jesus, the master Teacher, use a very well-known and very familiar experience, common to everyone, to teach a spiritual truth. It’s something we can connect to, an experience we’ve had, a feeling of lacking, the need to address it, and the feeling of being satisfied.
When he spoke the words in John 7, Jesus was already at a point in his ministry when he had become very divisive. Actually, it wasn’t Jesus who was divisive, but people were divided over how his message was being received. Jesus already had enemies wanting to kill him, but he also had disciples encouraging him to take the next step in putting himself out there so that more people would know who he was. As they saw it, if he was going to be a somebody, he had to make himself known. He needed more exposure. And they viewed the Feast of Tabernacles as a great opportunity for him to gain some recognition. People from all over would be in town for the religious fall harvest festival, where temporary tents and booths were put up for a week for people to live in as they remembered the Lord’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt.
Although his disciples encouraged him to come along with them, Jesus told them to go on ahead to the Festival without him. However, he ended up attending shortly after anyway. He wanted to arrive under the radar, not in the public show the disciples had hoped for. Nevertheless, once he arrived, he couldn’t help but teach. After all, it’s why he came.
As divided as people were over his teaching, he offered a simple litmus test for people to apply in order to determine if his words and teaching should be trusted (and one that still works today!). He explained, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own” (John 7:16-17). Jesus was in essence saying, “If you’re not sure about what I’m saying, try it out. Believe what I say, do what I call you to, live as I call you to live, and you will find out for yourself if my teachings are just tall tales or if they’re really from God.”
Later on in his teaching, Jesus extended another invitation. Not only did he provide an additional reason to “test-drive” his teaching, but he also made the unique connection to the occasion that Christians still observe today, the Festival of Pentecost. “Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them’” (v.37-38). It was an invitation. And it was a promise.
While Jesus extended the invitation to everyone, it’s really only for some; it is only for those who acknowledge they are thirsty. It’s only for those who realize something is lacking. It’s only for those who realize something is missing.
And that’s most people. Most people look at their lives and feel that something is missing. That explains why contentment is so elusive. We may not be very good at identifying precisely what we’re lacking, but many will go their entire lives pursuing whatever it is, hoping they’ll know it when they find it. Relationships, recreation, or retirement. Vacation or volunteering. Career or kids. We can add endlessly to the list, which only underscores the general awareness many people have that something is, in fact, missing from life.
While they may be willing to spend the better part of their lives looking for it, many often refuse to look to the One who actually extends the invitation and attaches a promise to those who take him up on it. People are pretty willing to give anything a try if it might just possibly address what’s been missing in life. Yet some, for the life of them, refuse to be open to the possibility that the life they’re searching for, the satisfaction for their thirst, might just be found in Jesus. They permit any number of obstacles in their lives that keep them from finding living water in Jesus. Maybe one bad experience in church – or an entire childhood of it. Maybe a bitter interaction with a hypocritical believer turned them off to any further interest in Christ or Christianity. Maybe their own intelligence keeps the door shut to the humility necessary to consider the truth of Jesus’ words. Whatever it might be, there is no shortage of obstacles that stand in the way of receiving the living water Jesus offers.
But see what Jesus offers to those who do thirst? “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (v.38). Rivers! Jesus promises an abundance of living water, not just barely enough to get by on. Not a few drops, a slow leak, or a trickle, but rivers of living water!
And Jesus backed up his promises with Scripture. Did he have Isaiah 58:11 in mind? “The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.” Was he thinking of Zechariah 14:8? “On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem…”
John explains for us exactly what Jesus had in mind with his invitation and promise. “By 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” (v.39). Jesus was promising the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, the very event described in Acts 2. Until then, while the Spirit had certainly worked faith in countless believers throughout history, there had not been a special outpouring like the Day of Pentecost. It was the very event prophesied by Joel, as Peter pointed out in his Acts 2 sermon. It was the Spirit washing over believers like a rushing river, flowing and going with the gospel, providing living water for everyone dying of spiritual dehydration. The Spirit was poured into believers, and then flowed out of them as the church carried out its work of preaching and teaching the gospel, so that, as Peter stated in Acts 2, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (v.21).
So… why hasn’t the Church looked much like Act 2 since, well, the events of Acts 2 took place? Where are the mass conversions of thirsty people coming to faith because they’ve finally received the living water that is theirs through faith in Jesus?
What if… we’re contributing to the problem? Jesus said “rivers,” but isn’t it true that a drop or a leak or a trickle is maybe a more accurate description of how the Spirit flows out of me? And if so, why does that happen? Isn’t it because I’ve kinked the spiritual hose that is supposed to flow into me and fill me up? And if that happens, is it because we’ve forgotten how spiritually thirsty our sin leaves us, or is it because we’ve fallen back into thinking something else in this world can satisfy that thirst?
Do we need to take to heart Jeremiah’s warning to God’s people in the Old Testament, so that we don’t suffer the same consequences? “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2:13). Later on the prophet Jeremiah warns yet again, “Lord, you are the hope of Israel; all who forsake you will be put to shame. Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust because they have forsaken the Lord, the spring of living water” (Jeremiah 17:13).
We come to churches, to Christian schools, to Jesus, who naturally appeals to all who are thirsty, but then… we turn back to digging our own cisterns and thinking we can satisfy our thirst elsewhere. Something has changed in our job, in our kids’ schedules, in our social lives, etc. And it’s true – something has changed! But it’s not what we think.
What has changed is our priorities, which have caused the kink in the hose of our connection to the Spirit. Sunday morning worship doesn’t work for us anymore. Small group conflicts with other family activities. Serving together with my fellow believers has run its course and been replaced by other responsibilities. The Spirit is no longer satisfying our thirst, we reason, when in reality, we don’t see that we’ve forgotten how thirsty our sin makes us – how damaging and destructive it really is. Maybe we’ve gotten too used to the gospel. We’ve taken forgiveness for granted. We know that we’ll always be welcome back here, so there’s no rush to return, and the spiritual dehydration has divided us from the source of living water.
Friends, it’s not too late. The living water still flows. The gospel of forgiveness and the grace that satisfies your thirst is still here. Take Jesus up on his invitation. Again. And again. And as often as you need to, for the Spirit will not ever allow the well of God’s grace to run dry. Plug up those other cisterns you’re digging up to satisfy your thirst. They won’t cut it. They will fail.
But Jesus doesn’t fail. The Holy Spirit, who gives us Jesus and points us to Jesus, will never cease. You know when you’re thirsty. Find what your soul thirsts for in Jesus, and cling to him to satisfy it.