John 7:37-53

Solomon is one of my favorite characters in Scripture. Just the study of his person is so interesting. He's not my favorite because of what he does — he does some wildly moronic things throughout Scripture — but he's a fascinating person for us to see, especially in our modern era. Solomon is a character who seemingly God never says no to. He has almost anything he could ever ask for. He had elaborate parties that signified how much people respected him. He had opulent wealth — it's recorded throughout that time period in other countries just how wealthy Solomon was. He had a huge family; he was known as the father of a huge generation. He also had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Everything he could desire to have, to experience, Solomon could — which makes him my favorite, because at the end of his life he says this: "I said in my heart, come now, I will test you with pleasure and joy, enjoy yourself. But behold, this also was vanity." He gets to the end of his life, after chasing after everything he wanted, having the excess of whatever he wanted, and he says this was vanity, this was meaningless — this never fulfilled me.

Which leads us to our big question for this morning.

Big Question

What makes us feel like we have enough?

There's a reality that we understand deeply, and it's maybe hard for us to admit or to say out loud: there's a part of us that's always unhappy, that's always searching for something new, that always wants more. Scientifically, this is conclusive — there are countless studies in psychology and medicine that show us there is something we long for, that we're always unsatisfied with. That doesn't stop us, especially culturally, from trying to explain how we can be satisfied. There's an author named Tara Parker-Pope, a writer for the New York Times, who says this in one of her books: "Writing about oneself and personal experiences and then rewriting your story can lead to behavioral changes and improve happiness. We all have a personal narrative that shapes our view of the world and ourselves, but sometimes our inner voice doesn't get it right. By writing and then editing our own stories, we can change our perceptions of ourselves and identify obstacles that stand in the way of our personal well-being." Essentially what she's saying is, yes, we aren't happy, but a way we can become happy is by telling ourselves that we are — editing your own story, rewriting your own story to tell yourself that you are satisfied. But that really doesn't work. As much as you try to tell yourself something is true that isn't, it doesn't make it any less true.

That might be the academic answer, the philosophical one, but there's an easier answer that's maybe more damaging but more popular. There are things we run to in our lives that take this place, that try to fulfill us, that try to bring us satisfaction — things like alcohol, money, power, drugs, popularity, social media, whatever it is. We try to fill ourselves with things we know can't sustain us. And when we know we're supposed to be satisfied — when we have this understanding that there is satisfaction to be had, but we can't find anything on earth that satisfies us — I think it points us to something bigger. That's what C.S. Lewis says: "If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world." There's something bigger than us, something outside of what we can create, that is supposed to fulfill this desire. What makes us feel like we have enough? Fortunately, the Bible has an answer for us, and that's what we're going to see in this passage in John chapter 7. So keep your Bibles open with me. We're going to see three questions work themselves out in this text: what is being promised, how does this work, and why can this satisfy us.

Outline

1. What Is Being Promised? (John 7:37-39)

2. How Does This Work?

3. Why Can This Satisfy Us? (The Cross)

1. What Is Being Promised? (John 7:37-39)

As you keep your Bibles open, I want to give us some context for what's happening as Jesus says this. Remember last week we talked about the Festival of Booths, or Tabernacles. This was a lamp-lighting and water-pouring festival that remembered the time in Israel's history when they were wandering through the wilderness, living in tents. Everyone would come together, bring their tents, and camp around Jerusalem. There was a water-pouring element to this festival that matters a great deal for our text today: a priest would take an empty pitcher in the morning and lead a parade of people, singing psalms and shaking branches, out of the temple down to a pool in the lower part of Jerusalem. Then they would walk back up to the temple and pour out this water on the altar, and it would spill out. This looked forward to a prophecy Ezekiel had seen — an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Ezekiel wrote: "Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east, for the temple faced east. The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. Then he brought me out by the way of the north gate and led me around the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east. And behold, the water was trickling out on the south side." This prophecy shows water spilling out of the altar, out of the temple, all the way down out of Jerusalem, all the way to the Dead Sea. When they poured water out at the festival, it was a way for them to anticipate God's Holy Spirit coming and restoring everything that was broken. That's what we see in this passage.

Let's look at verses 37 through 39: "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. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.' 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." So Jesus calls these people at the Feast of Booths to drink living water, and to receive the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, water was always synonymous with the Holy Spirit and life itself. Isaiah 44 says: "I will pour water on thirsty land and streams on dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring and my blessing upon your descendants." God had promised in Ezekiel's vision that water would spill out and flow — and as it flowed from the temple all the way to the Dead Sea, the river got wider and wider, deeper and deeper, until it transformed the Dead Sea from a sea so salty that there's no life in it into a sea teeming with fish. I had a professor who would lead trips to Israel and every year would bring a fishing pole down to the Dead Sea and throw in a lure, and the local people would look at him bewildered — there are no fish in the Dead Sea; it's so salty that salt pools on the shore in perfect cubed crystals. But he'd say, one day there's going to be fish in here — one day the Holy Spirit will transform and make everything new again.

There's some confusion about this passage — a question about whose heart flows living water. Is it the believer's heart, or is it Jesus's? There are theories both ways, but I believe the correct way to understand this is that it is Christ's heart — that it is out of his heart that flows rivers of living water. I believe that because Jesus has to be the source of life. The Holy Spirit can change our hearts; we can be sensitive to how the Spirit moves and respond and do things for him, but we do not produce life. I believe this passage is saying that the Holy Spirit binds us both in union with Christ and in communion with him — two different things. Union speaks of how we are bound together in Christ Jesus; communion is the benefits we reap from that union with him. As people heard this from Jesus, they would have understood this context — this is not just a one-off thing Jesus says. This was so ingrained in Hebrew history and culture that they wouldn't have just thought about Isaiah or Ezekiel, but about the Exodus. Remember in John chapter 6, Jesus calls himself the bread of life — the manna in the wilderness, a better version of that. Now he's claiming to be, spiritually, for the world what the water from the rock was during the Exodus. Jesus is not just saying, I am a new Moses, a new prophet. What he's saying is, I am the Moses — I am the better Moses. I am what history has been pointing toward and anticipating and desiring since Genesis 3.

2. How Does This Work?

To understand how this works, we need to understand the nature of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is so complex, so, I think, even foreign for us as Protestants — we can lose track of this third person of the Trinity. There are some helpful things I want to point us to, starting with the Nicene Creed, which says this about the Holy Spirit: "We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and Son, who with the Father and Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets." We could have a whole sermon series on the Holy Spirit — there's so much there — but let me condense it into a few points. The Holy Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son — this is not some manifestation of either of those two persons in the Trinity, but another person, sharing the same nature with them, rightly called God the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is someone, not something — not the Force from Star Wars, not some underlying vibration, but a person. The Holy Spirit was there in creation. The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin and applies to us the redemption purchased by Jesus by working faith in us.

We have to understand who the Holy Spirit is and what he has come to do, because as Jesus promises this, he's promising himself — he's promising God himself to be there with us, to dwell with us. Jesus is promising that the third member of the Trinity will come to all who believe in him. But rather than saying it plainly, he uses the image of rivers of living water. He's not doing this to be confusing or merely poetic — the people who heard this wouldn't have been confused about what he meant. This was so ingrained in the Old Testament — the Holy Spirit as water imagery — that the people understood exactly what he was saying. Water has always been what Israel longed for — not just in the desert, but for this true life-giving water that only comes through the Holy Spirit. What they had also been desiring was the healing of the land, a land where God would dwell with them. That's what they wanted in the wilderness: a land where God could be with them. The ultimate hope for us as believers is that God will dwell with his people, that we would be a magnificent temple, a temple city, needing no holy buildings, because God himself is in our midst, and Jesus is with us when two or three gather.

Jesus is standing at the end of this great festival, on the last day, the most magnificent day, after they had poured out pitchers of water for seven days, and he stands up and essentially says: everything you have been celebrating, everything you've been longing for, is here. I am he. Come to me and you will have rivers of living water flowing from you. The prophecy Ezekiel had been looking forward to was not a greater temple, but a greater people — a people who would have the Holy Spirit dwelling with them, so that we wouldn't have to go to a Holy of Holies, but would have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us.

3. Why Can This Satisfy Us? (The Cross)

Jesus says, come to me — I will satisfy you. Jesus can say this because on the cross, Jesus did what he came to do: he satisfied the wrath of God. On the cross, Jesus traded places with all who would believe in him. Jesus gets what we deserve — the punishment we deserve, the wrath of God poured out on evil and sinful people, which we describe as hell. That is what Jesus took on himself on the cross. He bore all the wrath of God. Jesus was sinless and yet was treated like a sinner. Jesus, the eternal second person of the Trinity, took hell on himself — which we should have received — so we wouldn't have to. That's love. When we say God is love, this should be the place our mind goes: a God who would come to us, who didn't need to bear our suffering, who didn't need to take on the wrath of God. So many people would die for a good man, as Paul says, but how many of us would be willing to suffer eternal torment, the full wrath of God, for someone else? That's what our Savior did. Before the foundations of the world, he said yes. He looked at you, a sinful person, and said, I will die for you. I love you.

That's the love of Christ, the love of God for us. It means on judgment day you will not be seen as yourself but as Christ — as the one the Father said, "This is my Son in whom I am well pleased." There is a trade that happens not just on the cross but into eternity future as well. Our sins are great, but even greater is his grace toward us. So going back to our main question — what makes us feel like we have enough? There will be nothing in this world that can satisfy us, and that's why we need something from outside this world. Drink from the river of life. We'll try to fill our hearts with things we can manufacture, things that have been given to us as a gift, but until we drink from the river of life, we will not feel that peace, that shalom, that rest that Christ has for us. We need to drink from Christ.

This prophecy, this water pouring, this festival, was all pointing toward something. Jesus is here at the moment they're anticipating the Holy Spirit being poured out, that water would flow and transform the people. A lot of people thought this was a literal prophecy — that there would be a literal spring, a water feature coming out of the temple. But this was pointing directly to Christ. What happened to Christ on the cross after he died? He was pierced in the side, and what came out? Water. Water flowed from the side of Christ. This prophecy, this festival, was all pointing to one moment where the Holy Spirit would pour out — not of the temple, but of God himself dwelling in our midst, out of Jesus himself. Jesus is the fulfillment of everything we've been longing for. The eternal thirst we have in us can only be met by the Holy Spirit himself and him dwelling with us. What we see on the cross is more than an escape route for us — the cross is more than fire insurance. The cross is our way to have God with us. Psalm 63 says this: "O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands." The psalmist understands what has escaped humanity for thousands of years — that just looking upon God, seeing his power and glory, is better than our life. Seeing his steadfast love for us is better than living. God is good enough; seeing him is good enough. Having the Holy Spirit dwell in us is better than anything this life has to offer. Because we have access to the Holy Spirit, to God himself, we don't have to travel, we don't have to pilgrimage anywhere — we can gather together every Sunday here, of all places, and worship him as if we were standing there seeing the Holy of Holies, seeing his power and glory, because we get the chance to every single week, through what God has done in us.

But I need to warn you — we cannot leave here today hearing this as a "Jesus is better" self-help message, as if grabbing enough of Jesus, listening to him, buying what he's selling, will be good enough to apply to our lives and make things better. It doesn't work that way. I don't want you to leave thinking that Jesus is the thing that's going to make your life better, that's going to make whatever you're going through instantly resolved. He will make our lives better because he brings us a peace that passes understanding — he is with us, and he's our comforter. But he's not a magic balm we put on our life that makes the problems in our marriage go away, that makes the problems with our health go away, that makes our sin suddenly less enticing. To gain this kind of satisfaction means losing ourselves in the process. To be united with Christ through the Spirit means that you, like Christ, must die, and that you must come back to the newness of life that only he has to offer. When you've tasted and seen the living water, when it's more than a guess, when we've tasted and seen that he is good, we can't go back — we'll be transformed so much that we will not care what happens to us in this life.

And that leads us to our one point of application: do not hedge your bets. You cannot access this kind of satisfaction, this kind of fulfillment, by also seeking fulfillment in other things. When you've tasted that the living water is sweet, is good enough, you'll be transformed so that what you see in this life — the trials and tribulations, the things life entices you with — are nothing in comparison. You can say to God: take my life, my money, my health, my family, my power, my popularity, my comfort — take it all, you can have it. If you take those things away from me, I will still follow you. Pursuit of fulfillment in anything created in this life is idolatry. That's why we talk about our hearts as idol factories — we love taking God, dethroning him from his position, and putting anything else we can on that throne, because it feels like we have control over that, like a shortcut to success. But what we're doing is building a house out of balsa wood — we're putting things up as the supporting poles of our life that we know are going to crumble, that can't hold the weight only God is supposed to hold.

The apostle Paul is a great example of this. He's a man who cannot be governed — told over and over to stop preaching the gospel, and he says, I will not submit to that. He's thrown in jail so they think that will shut him up — instead he converts half the people in jail. So they put him under house arrest, and what does he do? He writes half the New Testament. Finally they say, fine, we'll take your life. What is his response? "To live is Christ, to die is gain." There isn't anything you could take away from the apostle Paul, because his true treasure, the thing he loved most, was Christ. If you kill me, he's saying, you're just giving me the thing I love most — I will be face to face with my Savior. When we try to prop ourselves up with idols, with things we can create or manufacture, it doesn't just give us anxiety because we know the thing we're worshiping is temporary and can be lost at any time — when we lose it, our life falls apart; it destroys us. When we worship God truly, when we seat him on the throne, it protects our hearts. We can go through immeasurable suffering and say, this is but a light and momentary affliction, because we know what we have. So don't hedge your bets.

Why can we have this? Why can we be united with Christ? Why can we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, the thing Jesus promised here — that out of his heart, and out of ours, would flow rivers of living water? It's because on the cross, Jesus was forsaken. Why can we dwell with him? Because Jesus was cut off, no longer in communion with the Father. He became the rock that was struck in the wilderness, and he became spiritually parched. As Jesus died, this records: "After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said, to fulfill Scripture, 'I thirst.' A jar of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge of sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus received the sour wine, he said, 'It is finished.' He bowed his head and gave up his spirit." On the cross, why can we be satisfied? Because on the cross, Jesus wasn't. When Jesus needed water, when he was parched, when he thirsted, he was given sour wine, vinegar. Jesus traded places with us on the cross. Everything we receive is because Jesus was deprived on the cross. Jesus went to the cross not just to give us a better life, or the desires of our heart — he came and spilled his blood so that out of his heart could flow the Holy Spirit, so we could be united with him and have him. He went to the cross to give us himself. So church, drink from the river of life.