Below is the text (more or less) of a sermon I preached at the end of August in my home church on John 7:37-53, a passage which actually begs the question of how to talk about the Spirit while preaching about Christ. You can see from my notes at the beginning that I spontaneously came up with a new category while trying to lay out what I was going to do, "Spirit Consequence." I think that, in essence, the Spirit falls into the "application" part of the sermon, in that if we preach Christ, the Spirit naturally follows. Pentecost follows the death and resurrection of Jesus, and faith in Christ leads to the empowering of the Spirit in every believer, allowing us to actually obey and practice what we hear. It may be necessary to stress that the empowering of the Spirit exalts Christ by displaying His glory in our lives and empowering us to love and serve, for His sake. The Spirit always returns us to the Cross and empowers us to live out from the Cross.
RIVERS OF LIVING WATER
Fallen Condition Focus: Need for sustenance and satisfaction, thirst for the blessing of God.
Christ Solution: Offers blessing that is abundantly satisfying and overflows all need.
Spirit Consequence: Those who drink from Christ are now temples from which God’s blessing flows to all the earth; we now become Christ to the world.
Message Big Idea: Christ gives us blessing from God that satisfies the needs in us and satisfies the needs of others through us.
Introduction
This summer I had the privilege of taking several condensed seminary courses. Much o what I learned was fascinating even just on an intellectual level; in particular, I enjoyed a survey course on the Old Testament, and I was amazed at how much I didn’t know! I would like to share a little of what I learned this summer, particularly since I found that it connects directly to some New Testament teaching, and it has implications for us.
We are insatiable creatures, aren’t we? We need to be happy, we try so hard to be happy. The Rolling Stones sang so eloquently about this in their song, “Satisfaction.” We try in every way to meet the needs and desires we have, and our first impulse is to get satisfaction any way we can.
This drive can get us in trouble. We live in an addiction culture, and doctors and psychologists are debating the nature of addiction and the proper use of the term. Why? We have an abundance of additions! We are addicted to substances, to hobbies, to relationships, to information and entertainment; any object or activity is an opportunity for addiction for someone. Our view of God is critical at this point. One ancient poet said that God had two jars; one jar had blessing, the other had evil. He said that some men get all evil, and some men get blessing and evil, but no one gets all good. That is often the controlling perspective in our lives as it relates to God.
So, one school of thought says that since we are going to get the bad with the good anyway, we ought to satisfy every impulse for pleasure we have; you only live once. As the pirates say in Pirates of the Caribbean, “Take all you can, give nothing back!” Others say that, since there is evil mixed with blessing, we ought to become as impassive as possible. Pleasure is dangerous, and to be avoided. Don’t look too happy, or God may decide you’re ready for more suffering. Neither of these ways is a valid way of approaching God; they dishonor Him as a stingy God who begrudges giving out blessing at all, a kind of cosmic Scrooge. Instead, the God we read about in the Bible, even in the “stern and wrathful” Old Testament, is a God who abounds in blessing and can turn self-centered addiction into exuberant, loving satisfaction.
From Addiction to Satisfaction
Addiction vs. salvation, taker vs. giver, need amplified vs. need satisfied.
When it comes down to it, we want to be happy, not addicted. For instance, a parent does not worry about his son’s friends just because they spend a lot of time together; the question is, do these friends love each other, or do they use each other? Is your child being blessed or used in those relationships? God is like that, as well. His concern for you is not that you’re having too much of a good time, but that you are being used and abused by your addiction. We’re going to look at one theme, that of water, that God uses throughout the Scriptures to show His desire to bless.
We see this in the Bible from the beginning, at the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2:8-14. This is an unusual river! As it flows, it splits into more rivers- most rivers do the opposite. Also, it waters the entire earth. Note that Eden is a sanctuary where God met with human beings, and out of that sanctuary flows water for the entire world.
In Ezekiel 47, God shows Ezekiel a vision of the temple in which a river flows out from the temple to the Dead Sea and brings life wherever it goes. Listen to what Ezekiel saw. Again, God employs the picture of a fantastic river, this time to show what He will do. Again it flows from the temple, the sanctuary where God and man meet, and it brings abundant life everywhere it flows, even to the Dead Sea.
Finally, in Zechariah 14 the prophet sees a vision in which a river of living waters flows out of Jerusalem into the east and the west- a river that flows both ways! This is just a sampling of places where this river and water is spoken of. What does it all mean? How does God intend to bless, and what do we learn about it in these images?
What makes trusting in God, enjoying God, different from an addiction? An addiction only amplifies the need of the addict, making him increasingly selfish, even dangerous when his supply is threatened. However, God has an entirely different effect on those who enjoy Him. Everything that the river touches flourishes; life comes from death, and trees that bear fruit in every season, and everything affected becomes an expression of God’s blessing. The needs are satisfied entirely.
From Satisfaction to Love
In the New Testament, there are only 3 places that refer to living water; one is in Revelation, describing the same events as the prophets we just looked at. Another is Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4. The third place is in John 7, where on the last day of the Feast of Booths, 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.'” John goes on to say: “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.”
This saying generated some controversy among those who heard Him; consider what He meant! Jesus is claiming that if you come to Him, not only will your thirst be quenched, but you will become a source of water for others. Put another way, anyone who comes to Jesus will become a source of God’s blessing. Can you see why this was so disturbing? His hearers would have been comfortable hearing Jesus say that God would bring about blessing to the world through the Temple, but here He claims something far more radical; He claims to be the ultimate source of God’s blessing, and then applies the image of the river of living water, not to the Temple, but to those who come to Him. Just to make sure that we are clear, John explains that this river of living water is the Holy Spirit Himself. God’s presence flowed out from Eden and from the Temple to bless the world, and here Jesus says that God’s presence will flow out of His followers to the world.
Why would He do this? First, consider how God’s blessing and glory are multiplied when each of His followers is a Temple, from which God’s blessing flows bringing life to everyone around them. Additionally, He intends it for our best good. All to often, we’d prefer that God just gave us water for ourselves, and didn’t intend to make us a source of water for others. We have all sorts of things we want to pursue, and God enters the picture, we try to manipulate or bribe Him into doing feeding our addictions. “As soon as we encounter Him (God), we immediately look upon Him as another means of gaining our own ends. The natural man in his relation to God has this one purpose more or less consciously in mind: How can I, in the best way, make use of God for my own personal advantage? How can I make Him serve me best now, in the future and throughout eternity?” (O. Hallesby, Prayer)
We tend to either presume on God’s forbearance to enjoy things instead of God, or we try to bribe Him with our abstinence for the sake of enjoying something instead of God later, or simply our own pride. Though God may interfere with our pleasures from time to time, may disturb the peace of our household relationships, or tighten the belt financially so that some pursuits have to go, He doesn’t do it because He is a cosmic killjoy. Just the opposite! God provides us with life, food, health, relationships, and all good things as ways to enjoy Him! How do you know when you are truly satisfied? What makes your enjoyment of something different from an addiction? When you turn to another person to help them. What do you do when you find a great new restaurant? You tell your friends about it so that they can enjoy it; better yet, you might treat them to a meal there. When you’ve eaten your fill, what do you say to a person who’s still hungry? Dig in! When I was a college student, I would hover over a fruit plate at a party, because I almost never ate fresh fruit on my meal plan; I generally didn’t point the tray out to others because I wanted my part of it first- I didn’t know when I’d get fresh fruit again! Now, especially since we have kids, we have fruit all the time, and my fear for fruit has gone. God desires that we be so satisfied with Him that we in turn become a source of satisfaction, overflowing into the lives of those around us.
Conclusion
We are all addicts; it’s a matter of degree, not kind. It is no good to simply say, “I’m going to be happy!” There is too much real suffering in our lives and around us, and we are simply too weak to meet our needs or the needs around us. Christ called his first hearers and now calls us to come to Him not just to escape pain and suffering, but to be sustained by joy and satisfaction in Him through suffering, even to the point of reversing the suffering around you! Remember the picture of God having two jars, one for good, the other for evil? This God is completely different; He gives good to His enemies, and he even shows love to those who never come to Him! There is no where else to go; all else is either addiction or false hope. Only Christ experienced suffering and the penalty of sin for us in order to give us His own abundant life; He suffered to bring a us a life that overcomes suffering with joy.
· Have you drunk from this fountain? Are you now a fountain?
· Is life drudgery for you? Where is the abundant satisfaction of Christ?
· Do those around you see joy? Do they see its source in your life?
· Do you serve God to enjoy His blessings to you, or are His blessings opportunities to enjoy Him?
· Are there addictions in your life that simply amplify your needs? How might Christ answer that need abundantly? (Security in money vs. security in God, significance in work vs. significance in Christ, co-dependant relationship vs. intimacy and acceptance in Christ)
· Parents, are you concerned with entertaining your kids, making them serve your desires, or with leading them to the highest joy?
· There is no physical temple any longer; when we speak of “church” we cannot primarily refer to a building, but to a people. What, then, is the point of a building? We seek God’s blessing in this case in order to be more fully manifest as a Temple of God in our community.
· Our new church building we are anticipating will not satisfy us or our needs. Once the novelty wears off, we will find ways in which is it insufficient, it’s not all we hoped for, it didn’t accomplish all that we wanted.
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