Are you thirsty? John 7:37-39

Thirst is an interesting word. Websters dictionary defines it like this: Verb. long, yearn, hanker, pine, hunger, thirst mean to have a strong desire for something. long implies a wishing with one's whole heart and often a striving to attain. longed for some rest yearn suggests an eager, restless, or painful longing. yearned for a stage career hanker suggests the uneasy promptings of unsatisfied appetite or desire.

Medical dictionary; thirst [therst] a sensation, often referred to the mouth and throat, associated with a craving for drink; ordinarily interpreted as a desire for water. thirst (thĭrst), A desire to drink associated with uncomfortable sensations in the mouth and pharynx.

Have you ever been really thirsty? Maybe it was for water after a hot day of hiking or work of some sort. I think of the waterboy for a football team. Their most important job is to make sure the players that are thirsty have their thirst quenched. So you see them with their water bottles going around to the players holding up the bottle and squirting the water into the mouths of those who want it. They don’t go around squirting it into anybody’s mouth. Just those who say they need it.

Well, in our text we have Jesus calling the thirsty to come and quench their thirst from Him. But as we see he wasn’t talking about thirst for water, but for spiritual water. He was clearly saying He is that water. He spoke this way to the woman at the well in . He is doing a similar thing here.

If we go back to the beginning of the chapter even into chapter 6 you note that people were not believing in Him and even His brothers did not believe in Him.

We are told that Jesus later on goes up to the feast and we over hear a discussion about who Jesus is, with some leaning towards Him and others saying He leads people astray.

in v.14 He goes into the temple and engages in teaching and the conversation again flows to who He is.

Even in v.26 the people are reasoning that the rulers aren’t saying or doing anything to Jesus because maybe they know He is the Christ. (so they were starting to reason in the right direction, coming to the correct conclusion about Him). Nevertheless, they were not there yet in their thinking because they cannot get over the idea that they know Jesus is from Nazareth and if he was the Messiah they wouldn’t know that. However, Jesus addresses that in vss. 28- 29 He makes it clear who He is. He says he is from God and others say the devil which results in confusion among the hearers.Some did believe in Him and others sought to arrest Him, v.31

There is a gap of days between v.36 and 37.

Officers are sent to arrest him, and later he makes the statement we are examining here. The point He makes clear is that He is the Messiah and He uses their traditions and Scripture to say it.

Even after He makes it clear the people are still confused and divided about Him. They didn’t miss though what He was saying.

So we have Jesus going around asking or inviting rather, those who are thirsty to come and get drink from Him.

Here is how it plays out in our text.

Three points I want to make:

The occasion

The Invitation

The Division

I. The Occasion, v.37

This is the feast of tabernacles, the last great day of the feast. It is taken from

http://feastoftabernaclesva.org/ and from chosen people ministries website.

This festival commences on the 15th day of the 7th month on the Biblical calendar and lasts for 7 days. It looks back to the "wanderings of Israel" before they entered the "promised land"

The Greek term used for “dwelt” is σκηνόω skenoo, a word that refers to pitching a tent. The image is easy to grasp – God pitched a tent, which was His flesh, veiling His pure glory through the incarnation. Jesus pitched His tabernacle and dwelt among us for a short sojourn until the day of His reign. In that day, the Messiah King will pitch a far larger tent that will include both Israel and the nations under His sovereign leadership and Lordship.

AS part of their celebration the people would make Lulav and wave the lulavim {Lulav ([lu'lav]; Hebrew: לולב‎) is a closed frond of the date palm tree. It is one of the Four Species used during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The other Species are the hadass (myrtle), aravah (willow), and etrog (citron). When bound together, the lulav, hadass, and aravah are commonly referred to as "the lulav"}. It was a time to rejoice! And when we do gather, there will be families, singles, kids, and adults, all rejoicing together.

They would take this lulav/Arba minum(four kinds) and while waving in six directions south, north, east, up, down and west and recite Blessed are You, L‑rd our G‑d, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us regarding taking the lulav.

They would do it a second time holding it in the left hand and recite Blessed are You, L‑rd our G‑d, King of the Universe, who has granted us life, sustained us and enabled us to reach this occasion.]

It is actually the seventh day of the feast, Hoshana Rabbah (the great salvation), and it was the custom of the Jewish people during this period to send a band of Levites with choir and orchestra down to the pool of Siloam to gather running water in giant urns, and to then bring them back to the altar.

Jesus celebrated the festival in . One of His most significant and most profound announcements of who He is comes at the time of the feast. It is actually the seventh day of the feast, Hoshana Rabbah (the great salvation), and it was the custom of the Jewish people during this period to send a band of Levites with choir and orchestra down to the pool of Siloam to gather running water in giant urns, and to then bring them back to the altar.

we are to wave the lulavim {Lulav ([lu'lav]; Hebrew: לולב‎) is a closed frond of the date palm tree. It is one of the Four Species used during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The other Species are the hadass (myrtle), aravah (willow), and etrog (citron). When bound together, the lulav, hadass, and aravah are commonly referred to as "the lulav"}. and we are to rejoice! And when we do gather, there will be families, singles, kids, and adults, all rejoicing together.

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” ().

They would march around the altar crying our “Hosheanah” – Lord save us…Lord save us… many times over. They would then pour the water out from the urns at the base of the altar. This symbolizes the future hope of the Jewish people looking toward the day when Messiah would come and pour His Spirit upon the people of Israel in fulfillment of :

“It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days.”

They would sing the Hallel psalms 113-118 and chant the words of "with joy shall you draw water out of the wells of salvation."

These events were to take place when the Messiah appeared on earth, according to Jewish tradition. This pouring out was foreshadowed in the Temple by the pouring out of the water at the base of the altar. The water-drawing ceremony, as it was known, was a portrait of the day when God would send His Messiah and His Spirit and the Jewish people would come alive spiritually as never before.

Jesus celebrated the festival in . One of His most significant and most profound announcements of who He is comes at the time of the feast.

So we have the occasion on which Jesus makes his invitation

II. The Invitation

Jesus stood and Shouted said, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. . . . "

Jesus was telling the crowds gathered from around the Jewish world for the feast – one of the three of which it was commanded for Jewish males to go up to Jerusalem –that He was the Messiah, and the Spirit of God is now poured out. And that He is the living water, and those who drink or believe in Him will never thirst again! He was telling them that he was that water that they just brought from the pool and poured at the base of the altar.

Jesus is the fulfillment of all the Jewish festivals, and this includes Sukkot. First of all, we understand that Jesus Himself is the fulfillment of the festival in that He is God in the flesh who “tabernacled” among us, As John writes,

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” ().

Paul tells us in , “with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.”

The invitation is to believe the Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. He alone can quench the thirsty soul. He is the source of life of living water.

These verses could be put like this and I think fit better together, “Let whoever believes in me come to me an drink. Out of my heart flows rivers of living waters.” That would be saying the same thing as these verses. That is what Jesus means by the invitation.

That leads us to the third point.

III. The division, 40-44

I am not going to spend a lot time here, but to look at the response of those who heard His words first hand. That gives us clarity as to what Jesus meant. The first thing I want to say is that they got the message. They understood clearly what Jesus was saying. They knew He was not talking about water, but about believing that He is the Messiah, the Christ.

So then we see some of them believed Him ‘the prophet.’ ch. 1:21; 6:14; See They clearly thought he was Elijah, the one who was to come to prepare the way for the Messiah. But they missed the point.

others thought He is the Christ. They caught it just right. They believed.

Still others couldn’t make that connection because while they rightly knew that the Christ had to be from Bethlehem as offspring of David, they didn’t do their homework and remember that He indeed was born in Bethlehem as the Scripture makes clear. Hence, they couldn’t get round that issue, though everything else seemed to them to point to Him as the Christ.

And still others, were so opposed to Him they wanted to arrest Him and shut Him up for good.

Well that leads us to our conclusion the question and the invitation lies before us today. What say you about Jesus of Nazareth? Is He the Christ or not?

If you are thirsty to know the truth, you will know the truth and come and drink from the water that flows from Him. If you are not then you will be like the others in our text and settle for Him not being the Christ.

My prayer is that you will know the truth and come and drink.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

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