John 7: 37-39: " On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed,
'If anyone thirst, let him come to Me and drink.'
He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.'
Now this He said about the Spirit." (RSV)
It would be terrible to be thirsty.
It would be even more terrible not to thirst.
Desire to drink may be a sign that life is exhausted; absence of such desire may be a sign
that life is extinct.
Jesus said, " If any man thirst."
That is the sole condition upon which we may come to Him -- thirst.
No one goes to the well unless he consciously wants water.
" If any man thirst."
The historical setting of these words from Christ gives a introduction for His message.
The scene is in Jerusalem on the eighth day of the Feast of Tabernacles.
Each morning during that festival, a procession headed by a priest, went from the Temple
to the Pool of Siloam.
The priest carried a golden vessel.
At the pool the priest filled the vessel with water and brought it back to the temple,
while the jubilant people chanted: " with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation."
(Isaiah 12: 3,RSV)
At the west side of the altar of burnt offerings, he poured out a pathetic little trickle of water
which soon evaporated in the hot sun.
This part of the priestly pageant was intended to recall to the minds of pious observers
that magnificent picture in Ezekiel 47:1-9 of the waters flowing beautifully from below the Temple door.
" Everything will live where the river goes." (Verse 9)
" Glorious in his bright increase," that mighty flood to symbolize the vast and vitalizing
contribution Israel as a nation was to make to the world.
Jesus was probably watching this dramatic religious ceremony during the seven preceding days
when it had been enacted, and as He contemplated it, His spirit was deeply stirred.
This dreary dribble disappearing in the dust was not a fit figure for a sublime prophetic vision.
It was a ludicrous picture.
Suddenly, this caused Jesus to say: " If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink,
and out of him shall flow rivers!"
" Like the wondrous river of the prophet's vision,
So the Holy Spirit floweth full and free;
Larger, deeply fuller, still the river groweth,
Till it reaches the fullness of the crystal sea."
There are three things about thirst, natural and spiritual, that we will consider in this message.
Thirst Is Instinctive.
If thirst were not an instinct the human race would be extinct;
or rather it could not have existed at all.
As soon as a baby is born, it begins to thirst.
In some mysterious way the baby has the sense to suck.
But suppose it didn't.
Suppose, you had to try to teach an infant to drink his mother's milk.
That would be a hopeless task.
In his book, Like A Dove descending, Ian Macpherson tells this:
" We had a little baby once.
He was to all appearances a perfectly normal child, but he had the problem that he could not be
persuaded to drink.
Despite all our efforts to induce him to do so, we failed to persuade him to partake
of the nourishing liquid without which he could not live.
It wasn't long after this that we were following his tiny white coffin into the cemetery."
Spiritual thirst is also an instinct.
There are many expressions of this in the Bible.
" My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." (Psalm 42: 2)
" O God, Thou art my God, I seek Thee, my soul thirsts for Thee; my flesh faints for Thee,
as in a dry and weary land where no water is." (Psalm 63: 1)
" My soul thirsts for thee like a parched land." (Psalm 143: 6)
Do you personally know anything of this profound spiritual craving?
Do you have arising from the depths of your being a cry for your Creator?
Are you, in the midst of this godless, secular, materialistic age,
conscious of a longing for the living God?
The instinct is there because it has been divinely imprinted within us.
As the newborn baby thirsts for its mother: so the soul thirsts for its Maker,
and can never be wholly satisfied without Him.
Thirst Is Also Intense.
All of us are thirsting for something -- wealth, fame, popularity, position, power.
Within each of us there is an acknowledgement that the source of our satisfaction is not in ourselves.
But how seldom do we turn to the only Fount of every true satisfaction.
Like the poet, we need to register our firm resolve:
" Now the frail vessel Thou hast made
No hand but Thine shall fill,
For the waters of this world have failed
And I am thirsty still."
No other physical necessity is so demanding and commanding.
We can live without food far longer than we can live without water.
The liquid of life is our most insistent natural requirement.
There is a story of a tragic happening involving two missionaries -- a father and his daughter
-- who were trapped during a dreadful earthquake which rocked the town in Switzerland in 1935.
They were trapped by the fallen masonary in the cellar of a house.
The walls suddenly caved in and the man and his daughter were buried beneath the debris.
Fortunately, neither of them was hurt, but in that confined space, they suffered terribly
from claustrophobia, and were almost overcome by the heat and lack of fresh air.
And no one knew they were there!
So many buildings had been devastated in the town that it took the rescue-parties a long time
to discover and recover them.
The missionary and his daughter lay in that living tomb for days.
As the slow hours wore on their greatest problem proved to be thirst.
They hardly felt hunger at all, but their craving for water almost become intolerable.
Their thirst became so terrible that they broke off bits of plaster from the masonary
and sucked from them whatever moisture it contained.
At last, they were reduced to such serious straits that they had to drink their own waste.
There is a physical condition that we know medically as "dehydration."
That is not just normal thirst; it is an abnormal, pathological condition due to a deficiency of water.
Many years ago in the United States, a troop of calvary was sent out into the sandy wastes
of Texas to quell a band of lawless Indians.
The troupe got lost, and in that arid region under the broiling sun the troop experience
all the horrors of extreme thirst.
An army surgeon, writing about it afterwards, was with the troop recorded that the curious thing
was that, even when the water had been found and the soldiers had drunk of it freely,
it took one or two days before they began to feel the effects of it.
He explained the reason was that "when thirst takes a deep hold, it does not concern
only one organ of the body, but all the organs of the body."
This is also true with spiritual thirst.
D. L. Moody said: "For months, I had been hungering and thirsting for power in service.
I had come to such a state that I think I would have died if I had not got it."
This was a case of "spiritual dehydration" when the whole person passionately cries out
for the living God, and his soul is "like a hunted deer thirsting at every pore."
The Christian is always thirsty, and always drinking.
Jesus said: " Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst." (John 4:14)
It is evident from the context that Jesus also meant, " shall never thirst for anything else!"
True followers of Jesus are in a paradoxical position: they are always thirsty,
and yet, are always satisfied.
Someone has said: " They are satisfied with a dissatisfied satisfaction."
Thirst Is Also Individual.
Salvation is individual.
Someone has said: " If thirst is the condition of Jesus for our coming to Him for power,
then it follows that drinking will be the means of receiving."
So it is: " Let him come to Me and drink." (John 7: 37)
" We all were made to drink of one Spirit." (1 Corinthians 12:13)
For all its social implications and applications, Christianity is a private affair -- as private as a drink.
Notice, how often personal pronouns recur in Horatius Bonar's poetic record of his spiritual experience:
" I came to Jesus, and I drank
Of that life-giving stream;
My thirst was quenched,
My soul revived,
And now I live in Him."
Thirst is undeniably, individual.
In Brisbane, Australia a pastor was being given a tour of that great cities water-works.
He was told how many gallons of water a day was being filtered and purified and chlorinated
and supplied to that large city.
Then, at one point on the tour the man stopped and showed the pastor a plaque on the wall
of the central building.
He said proudly: " That plaque was erected to the memory of my father."
He went on to say: " He designed the dam, the pumping-station, filtering, beds and reservoir,
and gave Brisbane its water supply!"
It is so tremendous that we can say to a dry, thirsty world:
" My Father has provided a limitless supply."
There are some observations that we can make about that supply.
First, the supply antedated the demand.
Long before there was thirst; there was water.
Long before desire, there was provision.
Long before a human need, there was a Divine anticipation of that need.
Long ago God prepared Jesus to come to this world so that all who were thirsting
could drink of the Fount of living waters.
Also, the supply is adequate to the demand.
D. L. Moody was told his hearers, " to drink of the water of life freely.
There is plenty of it; you could never use it all up.
You might as well try to drink up the Mississippi River."
" More deep than the seas is that river.
More full than their manifold tides,
Where forever, and ever, and ever,
It flows, and abides."
So drink as much as you wish.
There are no restrictions on your opportunities.
In the Spirit, infinite resources are at your disposal.
Further, the supply is appropriate to the demand.
When a person is desperately thirsty what he wants most is not a lecture on the chemistry of water;
he wants the water itself.
As one great preacher has said: " Analyzing water into H 2 0 quenches no one's thirst.
His need is the water itself."
And fortunately, the very thing he needs is available.
The supply is appropriate to the demand.
It is not just a theology of the Spirit that Jesus offers: it is the Spirit Himself.
A theology of the Spirit has its own proper place, but our most urgent necessity is not
a systematic formulation of the third Person in the Trinity, but our most urgent necessity is
to be immersed in the Holy Spirit.
A person may perish with a text book on the chemistry of water open in his hands.
It is not paper that he needs: it is water.
So those who desire to be filled with God's Spirit:
" Don't be content with a theology of the Spirit; for your soul's sake, seek the Spirit Himself.
Finally, the supply must be assimilated for the demand to be met.
Have you noticed how in the Biblical texts connected with this subject, coupled with the offer of water,
there is so often an invitation to come and get it?
"Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters." (Isaiah 55: 1)
" If anyone thirst, let him come to Me and drink" (John 7: 37)
" Let him who is thirsty come, let him who desires take of the water of life without price."
(Revelation 22:17)
How do you acquire a spiritual thirst?
Look at the fountain, and the very sight will make you thirsty!
Fill My Cup Lord
"Like the woman at the well I was seeking
For things that could not satisfy;
But then, I heard my Savior speaking:
' Draw from the well that never shall run dry '.
There are millions in this world who are craving
The pleasures earthly things afford;
But none can match the wondrous treasure
That I find in Jesus Christ my Lord.
So, my children, if the things this world gave you
Leave hungers that won't pass away,
My blessed Lord will come and save you,
If you kneel to Him and humbly pray:
Chorus: Fill my cup Lord, I lift it up, Lord!
Come and quench this thirsting of my soul;
Bread of heaven, Feed me till I want no more--
Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole!"
