Rivers of Living Water

Booths was a week of looking back. For seven days Israel lived in shelters and remembered how God kept them alive in the wilderness, where there was no bread and no water but what He gave (Leviticus 23:42-43) (Exodus 17:6). Jewish tradition says that each morning of the feast a priest carried water up from the pool of Siloam and poured it out at the altar while the crowd sang. On the last and greatest day, with all that water ceremony fresh in their minds, Jesus stood up and shouted.

John 7:37-39 — Come to Me and drink

Rabbis usually sat to teach. Jesus stood and cried out (John 7:37). He called anyone who was thirsty to come to Him and drink. He didn’t point them to the altar, the priest or the pool. He pointed them to Himself.

Then He promised that whoever believes in Him would have rivers of living water flowing out from deep within, just as the Scriptures had said (John 7:38). The prophets had used that picture over and over. God would pour water on the thirsty and His Spirit on their children (Isaiah 44:3, 55:1, 58:11). A river would run out from the temple and make dead things live (Ezekiel 47:1-12) (Zechariah 14:8). Jesus was telling them that river runs from Him. Paul says the rock that followed Israel in the desert was Christ all along (1 Corinthians 10:4).

John doesn’t leave us guessing what He meant. He was talking about the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were going to receive (John 7:39). The Spirit hadn’t yet been given, John says, because Jesus hadn’t yet been glorified.

That doesn’t mean the Spirit was absent before. Every Old Testament saint who ever trusted God was born again by Him, and no other way exists (John 3:5-8). It means the great outpouring the prophets promised was scheduled for after the cross, the resurrection and the ascension (Joel 2:28). Jesus would tell His disciples it was better for them that He go, because then He’d send the Helper (John 16:7). At Pentecost Peter explained what had happened. The exalted Son received the promised Spirit from the Father and poured Him out (Acts 2:33). Nothing was late. The Father had ordered it that way.

Here’s something to notice about thirst. A dead man doesn’t get thirsty. Left to ourselves we’re dead in sin and perfectly satisfied with our own broken cisterns (Ephesians 2:1, 5) (Jeremiah 2:13). When a man starts to thirst for Christ, that’s the Spirit already at work in him. God makes him alive, gives him the thirst, and then fills him (John 4:14, 6:37). The man who drinks didn’t make himself thirsty, and the water isn’t his to keep to himself. It flows out of him to others.

John 7:40-44 — The crowd splits

Some in the crowd said He must be the Prophet Moses promised (John 7:40) (Deuteronomy 18:15). Others said He was the Christ. Others pushed back. The Christ wasn’t going to come from Galilee, they said. Didn’t Scripture say He’d come from David’s line and from Bethlehem, David’s town (John 7:41-42) (2 Samuel 7:12) (Micah 5:2)?

They were right about the Scripture and wrong about the man. He was David’s Son, and He’d been born in Bethlehem (Matthew 1:1, 2:1) (Luke 2:4). They had the right text and the wrong facts, and they never bothered to ask Him.

So the crowd divided over Him (John 7:43). That’s what Christ does. He said He came to bring division, and He does it in families, churches and towns (Luke 12:51). Nobody stays neutral long when He speaks.

Some wanted to grab Him, but nobody laid a hand on Him (John 7:44). It’s the second time in one chapter (John 7:30). The Father’s hour still hadn’t come, and every hand in Jerusalem stayed where God kept it.

John 7:45-49 — Never heard a man like this

The officers the chief priests had sent came back with nothing (John 7:45). The rulers demanded to know why. The officers didn’t blame the crowd or the timing. They simply said they’d never heard anyone talk the way this man talked (John 7:46).

These were temple police, not disciples. They’d gone out under orders to bring Him in, and they came back disarmed by His words. The same Word who spoke light into existence was standing in the temple courts, and even hired men could hear the difference (Genesis 1:3) (John 1:1-3). His teaching carried authority the scribes never had (Matthew 7:28-29).

The Pharisees answered with contempt. They asked whether the officers had been fooled too (John 7:47). Had a single ruler or Pharisee believed in Him (John 7:48)? As for this crowd that didn’t know the Law, they were cursed (John 7:49).

That’s how pride argues. It doesn’t deal with what Christ said. It counts who’s on its side and sneers at everyone else. But God has never needed the approval of the council. He hides these things from the wise and reveals them to little children, and He chooses the weak and despised so nobody can boast (Matthew 11:25) (1 Corinthians 1:26-29). The rulers were sure no one important believed. One of them was about to speak up.

John 7:50-52 — Nicodemus speaks

Nicodemus, the Pharisee who had come to Jesus by night, was one of them (John 7:50, 3:1-2). He didn’t preach a sermon. He asked a question. Did their law condemn a man before hearing him out and finding out what he’d done (John 7:51)?

It was a fair question, and the Law was on his side (Deuteronomy 1:16-17, 17:4). The men who boasted that they knew the Law were breaking it in the same breath they used to curse the crowd for not knowing it.

They didn’t answer him. They mocked him. Was he from Galilee too (John 7:52)? Search the Scriptures, they said, and see that no prophet comes out of Galilee.

They were wrong again. Jonah came from Gath-hepher, a Galilean town (2 Kings 14:25) (Joshua 19:13). Isaiah had promised that a great light would dawn on Galilee of the nations, and Matthew says that’s exactly where Jesus began to preach (Isaiah 9:1-2) (Matthew 4:15-16). They told Nicodemus to search the Scriptures, and they hadn’t searched them themselves (John 5:39).

Nicodemus’ question was small and cautious. But God doesn’t despise small beginnings (Zechariah 4:10). The man who came by night and spoke up timidly here would later walk out in daylight with a hundred pounds of spices to bury the body of Jesus (John 19:39). God finishes what He starts in His people (Philippians 1:6).