Too Smart to Receive?

“Rivers of Living Water”

(John 7:1-52, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, May 3, 2009)

John 7:1-52 See page 892 in your pew Bibles.

³⁷ 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. ³⁸ Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" ³⁹ 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.

Dwelling with God and hearing from God (1-18)

As Jesus moved toward the cross, the controversy around Him grew. A major turning point in the opinion of even many of those who had once considered themselves to be His disciples came when He told them they needed to eat His flesh and drink His blood in order to have life. This was an escalation of a conversation where people who were already offended by His statement that He came down from heaven, now frankly admitted that His difficult words were too troubling for them to remain associated with Him. Nonetheless, it was not yet time for the cross. He escaped some of the day to day dangers of being too near Jerusalem by travelling around Galilee, not because He was afraid of death, but because His time had not yet come.

One problem with avoiding Jerusalem is that Jewish adult males were commanded by God’s Law to gather at the place of God’s choosing for three major religious feasts every year. The temple was that place, and it was in Jerusalem. One of these feasts was the culmination of the annual calendar, the Feast of Booths, or Tabernacles, which is associated with the idea of God dwelling with His people in a world of perfection forever. This is the Christian hope. If the facts of the faith seem strange to our ears on occasion, it way very well be that we are thinking about the world of our current observation as everything. This is not the case, and for centuries Israelites celebrated this final feast in their annual calendar as a sign that one day we would dwell with God forever, seeing the Lord, and hearing His voice. Jesus came in order to do what was necessary to secure that great hope. He tabernacled among us, taking on the tent of our mortal flesh, and winning for us a new resurrection dwelling with God. If we ignore that fact, the fact that we have a glorious and secure eternal destiny, we ignore the Christian hope.

The feast of Tabernacles, we are told, was at hand, so as a true worshipper of the Father, He went to Jerusalem according to the Law, but not on the same schedule as His brothers. They were trying to push Him to go to the feast for another reason, to make a name for Himself, to attend with the idea that this would be a way to prominence. They did not believe in Him, or they would have trusted Him to know the pathway to the fulfillment of His mission. They thought as the world thinks. The way of Jesus and His kingdom is different than the way of the world. Jesus travelled to glory through the cross, which is itself an indictment against the sin of the world. When He eventually went to Jerusalem for the feast, He went first as a private worshipper, not to win the approval of a crowd.

There was much discussion about Him at the feast. Somewhere in the middle of the eight days of Tabernacles, Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. His teaching came from His Father. In this way He was very different from celebrated rabbis who studied the opinions of other teachers from the past and showed that their understanding was based on their research and their assent to the decisions of scholarly Jews. Jesus had an immediate Word from God in His teaching, and He boldly asserted that He had no falsehood in Himself.

I come from Him and I am going to Him. (19-36)

Not only was Jesus’ teaching absolutely true and directly from the Father, He also seemed to possess an immediate understanding of the opinions and motives of those who were listening to Him. He forthrightly confronted those who would not receive His Word. They were not Law-lovers and Law-keepers as they pretended, but they were violators of God’s Law who were actually seeking to kill Him, an innocent Man, and this because of His healing people on the Sabbath. Everyone agreed that to circumcise on the Sabbath was necessary work, and yet to heal the whole man was not allowed according to the traditions of the rabbis. Though the religious leaders taught based on these traditions, they had full trust in their own opinions, even when those traditions and opinions were at complete odds with the bold teaching of One who was performing the signs of the Messiah from the Scriptures.

It is easy to imagine that this situation was not only awkward, but full of significant tension. A Man was openly teaching who was generally known to be opposed by powerful people, and yet He was not being arrested. His miracles seem to be well known to everyone, but as the people judge Jesus, some find Him lacking in some detail of what they expect to be signs of Messiah. For example some apparently expect that Messiah will come in such a way that people will not know where He came from. Others insist that He will be known to have come from Bethlehem. In addition to all this, Jesus is talking about going away to Him who sent Him, and some of them are getting the distinct impression that it is the intention of Jesus to go to other Greek-speaking parts of the Roman Empire.

In an odd way, all this talk about where Jesus came from and where He is going is so appropriate for the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles. Where does the Messiah dwell? When He comes, where does He come from? When He goes away, where will He go to? What role will the Messiah have in making it so that we can live in God’s house? Jesus is at the center of our every longing for the greatest home. Without Jesus and the cross, there could never have been any peace in that home. We needed Him to come to take away the danger of our being near a holy God. This could only have been accomplished through His death. Jesus came from heaven, and He was returning to heaven with the good news that we would now be able to dwell with God forever.

Jesus and the giving of the Spirit (37-39)

In the midst of all of this, on the last day of the Feast, Jesus stood up and cried out one of the most dramatic and meaningful sayings of His entire ministry. “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.” We are told by the gospel writer that Jesus was speaking about the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, whom those who would believe in Him were to receive.

The story of a healing river that is connected with the dwelling place of God is a story that starts in Eden, and finds its perfectly secure fulfillment in the new heavens and the new earth, described at the very end of the Bible. Along the way, the prophet Ezekiel is given a vision of what has to be a heavenly temple where God dwells. Proceeding out from under that temple is a healing river. (Read Ezekiel 47:1-12 and Revelation 21:22-22:7) Jesus is the Temple of God, and those who believe in Him are united with Him in His designation as the temple of the Holy Spirit. This heavenly hope is what Tabernacles was all about, and Jesus is saying to all who would hear, “If you want the glory of the life to come, come to me and drink. Not only will you get heaven’s river, that river will proceed from you, for you will be the temple of the Holy Spirit, together with all the church, of which I am the Cornerstone.”

Do you see the importance of what our Lord is saying here, and what the gospel-writer is teaching us? John tells us without any doubt that Jesus is speaking about the Holy Spirit, the Spirit which will be given to the church when the Son of Man is glorified at the right hand of the Father. Jesus is saying, not only that we will be given this heavenly gift, this river that proceeds from the Son of God, the Temple of the Holy Spirit. He says something in addition to this. For the one who believes in Jesus, as the Scripture has taught us about a future river of heaven that flows out of the heavenly temple, out of the believers’ hearts will flow rivers of living water. Here now, and in the life to come, believers will be used by God as the source of healing fruitfulness for others. This is part of what it means that not only is Jesus the Temple of the Holy Spirit, but that we also have the privilege of that designation in Him.

This was a very appropriate declaration by just the right Man, at just the right time, in just the right setting. It happens to be great news. Though we can hardly understand what it could all mean, we know that it is deeply good, that we are not only to be observers of the glory of God, but somehow participants in God’s glorious eternal work. This is what we want. We want peace, and we have it. We want life, and we have that too. But we also want to be useful, to be valuable, to be agents of blessedness, and it turns out that this is what we shall be.

Jesus’ declaration did not take away all of the trouble that was already swirling around His Name. Instead it caused the conflict to grow, since it was a conflict that could only end at the cross. Eventually His time would really come, the time of His atoning death for us, the time for His resurrection from the dead, the time for His ascension into heaven, where from the right hand of the Father, the Spirit of God would be poured out upon the church, and the New Testament temple of believing people would be born and would grow. This growth of the temple would happen with still more controversy.

There would continue to be men like Nicodemus who would question the rightness of persecuting the innocent, and there would continue to be those who would be ready to hurl curses and insults at anyone who showed any weakness in the direction of faith. Above all of them, there would be the true Rock of our salvation who will not be moved. He is an ever-determined Source of life-giving waters to His people. Do not lose sight of the spiritual life that Jesus gives to us. Do not abandon the Christian hope just to seem intelligent to men who believe a very unintelligent thing, that their own thinking is more reliable than the Bible. Consider the healing rivers of heaven. Remember that God will dwell with us forever. Remember that heaven is real.

This is the Christ. (40-52)

1. Why did Jesus not agree to go up to the Feast of Tabernacles according the plan of His brothers?

2. What is the point of the Feast of Tabernacles, and how is it fulfilled in Christ?

3. How does that help us to understand the statement that Jesus cried out at the end of the feast?

4. What is the spiritual life that Jesus gives?