“Living Water” (John 7:31-44)

On Friday, we celebrated Independence Day. Hopefully you enjoyed the four “F’s” of July Fourth: Family, Fun, Franks, and Freedom. And there’s fifth “F” you no doubt experienced (intentionally or otherwise): Fireworks.

Fireworks are a tradition that is almost synonymous with the Fourth of July. You think “Independence Day,” you think “supersonic sparkling spectacles in the sky.”

When I was a kid, I thought that the fireworks on Independence Day were supposed to symbolize the rockets and cannons of the Revolutionary War—the “bombs bursting in air that gave proof through the night that our flag was still there…”

I thought the fireworks were meant to remind us from where our freedom comes; our history—that our freedom was bought with a price. I thought that the fireworks were meant to remind us that true freedom requires bloodshed. (I’m sure some of you might think you know where I’m going with this, but I’m not. Not yet.)

The point is, I thought fireworks on the Fourth of July were at least in part a way for us as a nation to remember our history and where we come from. 

As it turns out, they’re not—they’re just for fun.

John Adams, writing to his wife Abigail after the Declaration of Independence was drafted, said that day would be

“The most memorable Epocha in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival…It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

The thing is, America has its traditions, but most of them aren’t really rooted in anything. And maybe that’s our truest tradition—that’s what makes America America—the ability to do what we want.

But that’s not the case with Jewish Festivals or “Moadim” (מועדים)—i.e. “appointed times.” These Festivals are very intentionally symbolic in their traditions and deeply rooted in both history and eschatology. 

These traditions are ordained by God, and the symbolism in these ceremonies is pointing to to the same Reality that all of Scripture—everything that God has said to Man—is pointing to: Christ.

Deuteronomy 16:16 says,

Three times a year, all your males shall appear before the Lord your God at the place that He will choose (eventually Jerusalem): at the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Passover/Pesah), the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot), and the Feast of Booths (Sukkot).

I’m sure most of you are familiar with Passover. It commemorates when God liberated the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. 

The Feast of Weeks commemorates God giving them the law, or Torah, at Mount Sinai. 

The Feast of Booths, or Sukkot, commemorates God’s provision in the wilderness and the eventual coming into the Promised Land.

Now, if there is one Festival, one appointed time, one Mo’ed (מועד), that most closely corresponds with American Independence Day, I think it would be Sukkot or The Feast of Booths. Because this one puts the freedom from oppression and the providence of God and the possession of the land all together. 

Sukkot is the Festival that Jesus was attending when He promised the outpouring of the Spirit.

This is the Appointed Time that commemorates the deliverance from the slavery of Egypt into the wilderness, and then the deliverance from the wilderness into the Promised Land

This is the big one.

This Feast of Booths is such a big deal that it doesn’t even need to be identified with a postpositive adjective. It’s simply, “The Feast.”

This is the setting in which Jesus says, “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.’”

To understand just how explosive this appeal was—to see the fireworks that Christ set off with this statement—we have to understand the history, traditions, and symbolism of Sukkot.

That’s why John makes a point of giving the time and place of this statement—“On the last day of The Feast, the great day…”

Because the deeply-rooted traditions and ceremonies that comprise the Feast of Booths inform what Jesus is telegraphing to the people in attendance and those of us listening today.

Leviticus 23:42-43 states the purpose of this great day. God said to Moses,

“You shall dwell in booths for seven days…[so] that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.” 

During the 40-year wandering in the desert, the Israelites lived in temporary booths or shelters. This was providential. They weren’t exposed to the elements in the wilderness. That is why God commanded them to live in temporary dwelling places during this Festival—to remember where they came from and how God provided for them as He brought them through the wilderness into the Promised Land.

Deuteronomy 8:11-16 says,

“Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments and His rules and His statutes…lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them…and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart will be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,

Who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock…that He might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end.”

Despite the terrible hardships of the wilderness, it is still worth celebrating. God delivered them from slavery, He provided for them as He tested them to do good for them in the end. 

He brought water to them out of the rock. 

That is what they are celebrating at the Feast.

We can relate to this as believers.

Because we’re all (formerly) slaves to sin. We were all in bondage. We were all in Egypt, so to speak. And God delivered us from slavery to freedom in Christ.

And we have all gone through our own personal wildernesses to get there, but God provided throughout.

This is worth celebrating. It’s a big deal!

There’s this ceremony during Sukkot that was not prescribed by God, but it was a tradition dating back a few centuries before Christ and it, too, was deeply rooted in Jewish history and the wilderness journey. 

There was a rite of water libation performed during the seven days of the Festival. Someone would fill a golden jug with water from the pool of Siloam [yes, that Siloam] and bring it to the west end of the temple to pour out into a limestone basin that flowed east that would mingle with wine poured into the eastern basin, and they would come out together into a larger basin. 

The people loved this tradition. According to Mishna Sukkah 4:9, the one pouring the water was told to raise his hand as he poured so that his actions would be visible. 

This is because one time a Sadducee priest intentionally poured the water on his feet, because the Sadducees did not accept the oral tradition of this ceremony. In the people’s rage at the Sadducee for disregarding this tradition, all the people pelted him with fruit [etrogim (Etrogim, by the way, is a lemon-looking citrus fruit that God instructed the Israelites to take in Leviticus 23:40)].

The point is, the people really enjoyed their water libation. It was a defining aspect of the celebration. This was the fireworks for them.

While this rite was not originally decreed by God, it is another callback to God’s provision in the wilderness, specifically the rock that Moses struck from which water flowed in abundance in Meribah. The story can be found in Exodus 17 and Numbers 20. 

Of course, we now know that the rock in the wilderness was pointing to Christ.  

But the Jews at the time did not know that. They still don’t. However, they were expecting the Messiah (a lot of them still are). They knew the rock in the wilderness was pointing to something or Someone greater, they just didn’t know Who.

These ceremonies were related not only to God’s provision of water in the wilderness, but also His future pouring out of the Spirit in the last days. They knew this was coming, too. 

The pouring of water at the Feast of Booths refers symbolically to the Messianic age in which a stream from the sacred rock—or Temple—would flow over the whole earth.

Isaiah 12:3 says, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.”

See, the water-pouring ceremony is interpreted as a foretaste of the eschatological rivers of Living Water.

For example, Ezekiel 47:1, 6-9, speaking of a future time, says,

“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)…[It was a river so deep that it could not be crossed]…Then he led me back to the to the bank of the river.

“As I went back, I saw on the bank of the river many trees on the one side and the other. And he said to me… ‘When the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh…For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes.”

This living water, the Spirit of God, brings new life. It regenerates what was dead.

Zechariah, written over 500 years before Jesus made His appeal to come to Him and drink (12:10, 13:1), says,

“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look upon Me, the One whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over Him, as one weeps for a firstborn…

(The Jews sort of overlooked this first part and went straight for the next. Still do.) Zechariah 13 continues…

“On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from their sin and uncleanness.”

What Jesus said on the last day of Sukkot was bursting with significance: “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.”

People immediately picked up on this.

That’s why “When they heard these words, some of the people said, ‘This really is the Prophet. Others said, ‘This is the Christ.’ But some said, ‘Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David?’”

When Jesus said this, they knew exactly what He was implying. That raises the ultimate question: Who do you say that Jesus is?

C. S. Lewis puts it best with his famous trilemma: Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. In Mere Christianity, he wrote:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. 

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. 

Either this Man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. … 

Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.”

If you hear nothing else today, hear this: the question that must be answered is “Who is Jesus?” Do you see Him as the Messiah? Do you see Him as the Christ promised in Scripture who takes away sin? Or do you see Him as a liar or lunatic from Galilee?

Furthermore, if He is Lord (and He is), is He your Lord? Have you made Him Lord of everything in your life? Have you surrendered to Him and let Him lead you out of slavery and the wilderness and sin that you cannot escape on your own?

Ok…

There is one more aspect of the Feast that we need to consider before really diving into the text—the bull sacrifices. 

Numbers 29:12-34 stipulates that, in addition to the two rams, 14 lambs, and one goat sacrificed each of the seven days of Sukkot, there were diminishing bull sacrifices.

• Day 1: 13 bulls
• Day 2: 12 bulls
• Day 3: 11 bulls
• Day 4: 10 bulls
• Day 5: 9 bulls 
• Day 6: 8 bulls
• Day 7: 7 bulls

If you’re doing the math, you’ll see that a total of 70 bulls were sacrificed by the end of Sukkot. That might strike you as a significant number, and you’d be right. So why 70 bulls? I’m glad you asked. The answer can be found in Genesis 10.

Genesis 10 lists the generations of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth—all of the people born after the Flood and the subsequent nations that they eventually started. This is called “The Table of Nations.” 

Jewish tradition holds that there are 70 or 72 nations in total. The whole world, for all intents and purposes, is these 70 nations.

That is why in Luke 10 Jesus appointed 70 (or 72) to go on ahead of Him. He was sending them figuratively out to the whole world. 

According to Rabbi Elazer in Sukkah 55b, 

“[The seventy bulls] correspond to the seventy nations of the world, and are brought to atone for their sins and to hasten world peace.”

After the temple was destroyed, Rabbi Yohanan said,

“Woe unto the nations of the world that lost something and do not know what they lost. When the Temple is standing, the seventy bulls sacrificed on the altar during the festival of Sukkot atones for them. And now that the Temple is destroyed, who atones for them?”

Jesus gave us the answer to that question. Remember that He already said in John 2 something better than the Temple is here (Himself). But Rabbi Yohanan, like many Jews, did not see that.

Nevertheless, at the time, the Jews understood that the bulls they were sacrificing at Sukkot were to atone for the whole world, even if the nations didn’t know it. 

I think this is a lot like the prayers you pray for your unsaved loved ones—they may not know or appreciate what you are doing, but your supplications are still being heard, and they are not for nothing.

Rabbi Milgrim said,

“You find on Sukkot, Israel offers to [God] seventy bulls as an atonement for the seventy nations. Israel says, ‘Sovereign of the worlds! Behold, we offer for them seventy bulls, and they ought to love us, yet they hate us! As it says [in Psalm 109:4], ‘“In return for my love they are my adversaries.”’”

The Jews understood that salvation would come for the whole world from them. They were expecting it. But while they understood that truth theologically, it was only theoretical to them. They believed it, but they didn’t really believe it. 

I’m sure you can understand this to some degree.

I’m sure all of you have that person you’re praying for. You know salvation is possible for them, but you don’t really believe it will ever happen. The drug addict, the wife beater, the politician, the apostate family member… Right? 

You know they could be saved, but you don’t think they will be. And some of you may even feel a little resentment towards them for rejecting your genuine concern for their salvation.

This is where the Jews were. Salvation was possible for the world, but they had the monopoly on it. They didn’t really believe it would happen.

All of this information, all of this history and the traditions embedded in their DNA—freedom from slavery, provision in the wilderness, the promise of a greater inheritance, salvation, the Spirit of God—centuries of expectation and hope were all swirling around 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.”

Now we can start the sermon.

We have heard similar language before. In John 4, Jesus told the woman at the well, “Whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (4:14).

In that case, Jesus was using the well as a touchpoint to connect what was already observable to the greater Truth. He does that a lot in John’s Gospel.

If you recall, in chapter 2 of John’s Gospel, He presented Himself as the true Temple, in chapter 3, He is the true brass serpent in the wilderness, in chapter 4, He is the true bread from Heaven, now, in chapter 7, He is the Rock that was struck in the wilderness from which life-giving water pours forth.

Remember, Jesus is not the Living Water Himself. Rather, He will give the Living Water. John makes the distinction clear, saying, “Now this He said about the Spirit.”

Paul makes this connection in 1 Corinthians 10:4 when he says, “They all drank from the same spiritual Rock, and the Rock was Christ.”

Jesus uses our context to reach us and teach us about Himself. Saying this at Sukkot, obviously, added layers upon layers of meaning.

The idea of the Spirit of God was not new to the Jews. In fact, we see in Nehemiah 9 that the Israelites put all of this together. In their national confession of sin they prayed,

“You gave them bread from Heaven for their hunger and brought water for them out of the rock for their thirst…You in Your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness…You gave your good Spirit to instruct them and did not withhold Your manna from their mouth and gave them water for their thirst” (Nehemiah 9: 15, 19-20).

The Spirit, which is the Water, which flows from the Rock, is eternal and given by God.

The Spirit was active in the creation of the world in Genesis 1:2.

“The Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David” in 1 Samuel 16:13.

The Spirit of the Lord even stirred in Samson in Judges 16:25.

But the Spirit had not yet been given as available to all who believe, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.

Just like water exists and may splash on some people and get them wet externally, it does not give life until it is consumed.

You can swim in a freshwater river and still die of dehydration. You have to drink the water in order to live.

We as Christians are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. He does not come upon us and do His work and then depart like He did with Saul in 1 Samuel 16:14.

The Holy Spirit seals us. He stays with us and is inside us. 

“In [Christ] we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory. 

In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, Who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory.” (Ephesians 1:11-14)

This hope, this promise, is not like the promise of the Promised Land that the Israelites in the wilderness held. It is a guarantee of the inheritance made possible only by adoption into God’s family through the life, death, resurrection, and glorification of Jesus Christ.

Even the prophets in the Old Testament—those who were led by the Holy Spirit to speak for God—could not fully understand this promise. Not even the angels understand.

First Peter 1:10-12 says,

“Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what Person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. 

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from Heaven, things into which even the angels long to look.”

This is something that is only understood by those who believe in Jesus, those who drink from the Living Water He provides. 

You and me.

We are privileged! 

This Living Water—the Holy Spirit—is only given to those who believe in Jesus according to God’s good will. 

And not only do we receive the Holy Spirit, we also become conduits of Him because of God’s generous outpouring.

Let me be clear, we do not distribute the Holy Spirit. Only Christ is the Rock from which the Living Water flows. The Living Water has its ultimate source in Jesus, but the believer becomes a mediator to others through evangelism. We preach the good news by the power of the Holy Spirit sent from Heaven.

Leon Morris put it this way:

“The drinking of which Jesus there spoke is possible only to one who comes to faith. And faith has its results. When the believer comes to Christ and drinks, that believer not only slakes his thirst but receives such an abundant supply that veritable rivers flow from him. This stresses the outgoing nature of the Spirit-filled life.”

“Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38)

Jesus is speaking of you—believers.

The word for “heart” here is not cardia, which is the organ that pumps blood. No, the word Jesus uses here is κοιλίας (koilias). This is used figuratively of “heart,” but it’s not the mushy, emotional, feelings kind of heart that we tend to think of today. This is more than sentimentality.

It means belly. It means guts. It means bowels. It means the innermost being of a person. It means womb, as in pregnant with life bursting to be born. It means desire so overwhelming that it hurts until it flows out.

This is in contrast to those who hoard their Christianity. Those who feel no discomfort keeping it to themselves. Those who are content to call themselves Christians and go to church on the weekends and read their five-minute push-notification devotionals that pop up on their phones and might just be so bold as to type “Amen” in their aunt’s Facebook status that asks if you love Jesus.

Of these kinds of Spiritual hermits, Morris said,

“They have become ingrown. They seem to have made no attempt to influence others and thus to bring the blessing to them. Just as the Dead Sea receives the Jordan, but gives nothing out and thus becomes lifeless and arid…[so are those who] receive the [Spirit of] God and keep it for themselves” (Morris).

The Spirit-filled life is not about flopping around on the floor or playing with snakes or smacking people in the face with a white sports coat. It’s not even about healing the sick or praying in tongues. 

It’s about the Spirit of God put into us, sanctifying us, sealing us, enabling us to obey, empowering us to be more like Jesus, and overflowing into everything we do, every aspect of the life He gives.

The Spirit-filled life is about the overflow of Living Water that Christ pours into those who believe, and sharing that life-giving Spirit to those who are dying of thirst in the wilderness. It is about sharing the gospel with the world—evangelizing the seventy nations.

It’s about being a light brighter and louder and more dazzling than any Fourth of July fireworks display.

If you are a believer and you’re thinking to yourself, “I don’t have that. I don’t feel like the Holy Spirit is pouring out of me.” If you’re wondering, “Am I really even a Christian?”

Don’t worry. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead—if you trust Him as the only source of forgiveness for sins—you are saved. You have the Holy Spirit in you.

And you’re not alone in your misgivings.

A. B. Simpson, the founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance movement, realized that he did not have this outpouring of the Spirit, even after a decade of preaching the Gospel. 

It was not until he fully surrendered to the Holy Spirit—not until he experienced the sanctifying work of God that makes you more holy (more like Jesus)—that the Holy Spirit began to work through him.

Because you can have the Holy Spirit in you, but you may not be allowing Him to work.

Simpson said,

“I dare not say that I was not a Christian many years before I knew this, and that I [did not] preach the Gospel for at least ten years before I knew what it was to have a Divine Presence living and manifesting His reality in my brain, my affections, my will, my body, my thought, my work—the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

“And I am sure He never came to me in that way, as the occupant of my house, until I gave him the house and became no longer the owner of the house, but a lodger in it, and He the proprietor of taking care and using me.”

You must surrender to Christ completely and let Him work through you without resistance—without quenching or stifling the Holy Spirit. You have to trust that He knows what’s best and want Him to use you. To do you good in the end to the praise of His glory.

By fully surrendering to Christ you can do things beyond what you thought were possible. 

But it will come with opposition.

It did for Jesus.

“When they heard these words, some of the people said, ‘This really is the Prophet.’ Others said, ‘This is the Christ.’ But some of them said, ‘Is the Christ to come from Galilee?’ Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?’ So there was a division among the people over Him. Some of them wanted to arrest Him, but no one laid their hands on Him.” (John 7:40-44).

Jesus always brings division. He always has and He always will. He said so Himself.

“Do you think that I have come to give peace to the world? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother agains daughter and daughter against mother…” (Luke 12:51-53)

So don’t be surprised when your friend or family member or coworker rejects your gospel conversations. Don’t be shocked if they even become angry.

We saw already the first half of  Psalm 109:4

“In return for my love they are my adversaries, 

But the second part of that verse is:

“but I give myself to prayer” (Psalm 109:4).

And the Spirit—the Living Water—gives us that as well. 

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26-27)

So keep praying. Keep pouring out the Living Water from your heart—your guts.

The Spirit of God dwells in you.

If you have made Christ Lord of your life, then this promise is for you.

If you have not yet surrendered to Christ—if you have not made up your mind whether He is a liar, a lunatic, or Lord—then this promise is not for you, but it can be.

This promise is for anyone who believes in Him.

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.”

If you want the Spirit of God—if you want the guarantee of the inheritance, if you want a relationship closer to and more intimate with God than even the angels have—come to the Rock in the wilderness that was broken for you and drink the life-giving Water. 

Come to Jesus.

Only Christ can give you the Living Water that will satisfy your thirst forever.

Only Christ can give you true freedom and deliver you from slavery to sin and the wilderness. 

Only Christ can give you the Living Water that makes you alive.

This is truly explosive, and it is worth celebrating.