Let's pray together. Oh, our merciful Heavenly Father,
what a day that will be when we're able to sing as we ought,
when we're able to worship you, Lord, as we want in the fullness
of faith and glory and love and Lord, we we long for that day
when sin will be no more. We thank you that there is a
fountain that flows from Emmanuel's veins, a fountain that, when
plunged into, truly removes all guilty stains. We pray, Lord,
once again today that you would that you would enable us and
cause us to to come in faith to Christ and to finding the
cleansing power for all sin that we might leave this place having
been washed in the blood of the lamb once again. For we ask it
in his name. Amen. I asked Tom to lead us in that
hymn this morning to help us to think about the subject at
hand for this first hour. And I would like for you, if
you would, to open your Bibles with me to Zechariah chapter
12. That's the next to the last book
in the Old Testament. just before Malachi, Zechariah,
chapter 12. William Kalper wrote that hymn
that we just sang. I think he wrote it around 1776. And Mr. Kalper struggled with
the fear of death and wrath and judgment to the point of paralyzing
him. He was not able to find any rest. His friend, who we know as John
Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace, led William to this passage of
scripture in Zechariah. And he wrote that hymn, inspired
and comforted by what the Lord revealed in Zechariah chapter
12 and in Zechariah chapter 13. I'd like for us to read a couple
of verses, Zechariah chapter 12 at verse 10, the Lord speaking
of the day of Christ. This is prophecy of what would
be accomplished when the Lord Jesus came into the world. And in verse 10, he said, I will
pour upon the house of David. and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem
the spirit of grace and of supplication. And they shall look upon me,
whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, long for
him, seek to know him, and find comfort in him." That's what
this word mourn means. as one that mourneth for his
only son and shall be in bitterness for him as one that is in bitterness
for his firstborn. It's the Lord's promise. And
that day I'm gonna send my spirit in power. And the spirit of God
is going to show God's people that salvation is all of grace. It's all of the Lord. And in
seeing him, They're going to ask Him to supply for them what
they cannot supply for themselves, the spirit of grace and of supplication. Spirit of supplication. Lord,
supply for me freedom. Supply for me forgiveness. Supply for me rest, hope, salvation. I cannot provide it for myself.
If it comes, it will be all of God's grace. And then he went
on to read in chapter 13, in that day, there shall be a fountain
opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem
for sin and for uncleanness. We just read what that fountain
was. We just sang what that fountain
was. It was opened up when the Lord Jesus spilt his blood on
Calvary's cross. And that is the covering of our
sin. And that is the hope of our salvation. If you will, turn with me to
John chapter 7. John chapter 7. Our Lord's brethren did not believe
that he was the Messiah. Though they had lived with him
in the same home for so many years, they still did not believe. And in John chapter 7, they taunted
him to go back down in Jerusalem and make himself known. If you
really are who you say you are, go public. Go down there in the
big city where all the important, influential, powerful people
are and let them know who you are. Perform your miracles, not
in these small towns up in Galilee, quietly, discreetly, but do it
publicly. And so our Lord didn't go until
it was his time to go. And then he did go. And in John
chapter seven, the scripture tells us that he
was there for the feast of the tabernacles. Now, in the Old
Testament, there were many feasts and many celebrations, but three
feasts in particular that required every adult male Jewish man to
go to Jerusalem and make sacrifice. And they were the Feast of the
Tabernacles. It was the Feast of Passover
and the Feast of Pentecost. The Feast of the Tabernacles
was the Jews celebrating the provisions that God had made
for them for those 40 years in the wilderness. It's celebrated
in the fall of the year. I think next month on the 6th
of October, the Jews will be celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles.
If you have Jewish neighbors, you might see them put up a little
makeshift lean-to or hut in their front yard. as a part of that
celebration, and they will eat a meal out there. The Jewish
people are still remembering what the Lord had done in providing
for them bread and water for 40 years during the time they
were in the wilderness. The Feast of Passover, of course,
was when the Lord delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt
and out of the bondage of the taskmasters of Egypt. by the
blood of the lamb put on the doorpost and the lintel of the
house. And God said, when I see the blood, I will pass by you. And then the Feast of Pentecost
was 50 days after Passover, and that was a celebration of God
giving the law to Moses at Mount Sinai. Now, if we begin with Passover,
which is a picture of our salvation, God delivering us from sin by
the blood of Christ, and then move, which by the way is celebrated
in the spring, and the Lord now in John chapter 7 is in the fall,
so he's going to continue to reveal himself for six more months
before he goes to Calvary's cross. And then the Feast of Pentecost,
recognizing the coming of the law on Mount Sinai, but for the
believer, it is an acknowledgement of the new law that we've been
given. We're not under the letter of the law, we are under the
spirit of the law. And we have the law of the spirit,
the law of grace, the law of Christ. It does not make us lawless,
but it is a law now that's written on the heart. It's not the letter
of the law killeth. It's the spirit of the law that
gives life. And then from there, the feast of tabernacles. a recognition of the Lord Jesus
who was the one who not only fed them for those 40 years in
the wilderness, but he was the bread and the water that they
consumed to survive those 40 years in the wilderness. Now,
this is a picture of our life of faith in this world. 40 years,
the life of a generation, we're in this world. And it is the
bread that falls from heaven. The Lord Jesus said that he was
that bread. He is the manna that fed them
every day. The water that came from the
rock when Moses took the rod of his justice and smote the
rock, and the water that gushed forth from that rock and provided
them And the scripture tells us that that rock is Christ. And the Lord Jesus himself is
the water of life. So that's what they're celebrating.
They're celebrating the event without any recognition of the
Lord Jesus as the one who that celebration was to honor. And now the Lord's going to reveal
himself in the temple. If we go back to Leviticus chapter
23, you'll find the details to the Feast of Tabernacles. And it was an eight-day feast.
And on the eighth day, there was a holy convocation. There
was a time of of remembrance, a time of soberness,
and then concluding with a time of great exuberant celebration. That's where the Lord Jesus is
in John chapter 7. This is important. I love thinking about 1 Corinthians
chapter 15 when Paul is speaking of the gospel and he says how
that Christ died according to the scriptures, and was buried
and rose again according to the scriptures. So all of those Old
Testament feasts were pointing singularly to the Lord Jesus,
and yet men still go through the ceremony, they still go through
the acts, they still remember the events without any recognition
of the person that fulfilled all of that. He is the fulfillment
of the law, not just the moral law, but the ceremonial law and
the civil law. All the laws are fulfilled in
Christ. And the Lord is going to declare
to these people in Jerusalem very clearly who He is. And more
importantly, it's important for us to understand these events
because He is declaring Himself to you and me. and how hopeful
we are that he will reveal himself to our hearts even now as we
open his word and consider the fountain that cleanses us
from all sin. So, as I said in Leviticus 23,
there's very detailed information given about the sacrifices that
were made And the last thing that was done on the eighth day
of the feast, and the eighth is the picture of the resurrection,
the Lord Jesus was raised. Yes, we say on the calendar the
first day of the week, but it was really the eighth day of
the week. And the early morning as the sun peaked up and changed,
the Sabbath didn't end until the sun came up on Monday morning. As the sun is peeking over the
horizon, in fulfillment of the seventh day, the day of rest,
and in declaration of the celebration, the day of hope, the Lord Jesus
conquers death and rises from the dead. So the eighth day of the feast,
according to this Old Testament picture, is pointing to the resurrection
of Christ. And the resurrection is important
because without the resurrection, the cross is a failure. Without the resurrection, there's
no hope. Without the resurrection, Christ didn't accomplish anything.
It is the resurrection that God reveals to us that he's satisfied
with what the Lord Jesus accomplished at Calvary's cross, the Passover. The blood that was shed was sufficient
to save us and to cleanse us of all sin. Now on the eighth day of the
feast, look with me. Verse 37, and in the last day,
that great day of the feast, The last thing that was to happen
now, all these ceremonies ended in a very quiet, holy, somber
moment when the priest would take the drink offering and pour
it out on the altar. That was the last event. And
as the water was poured out on the fire and the steam went up,
that's when all that were there would burst into celebration
and rejoice in the meaning of that. Not knowing
what the meaning was, they were just having a religious ceremony.
Might the Lord enable us right now to understand the meaning
of it? Because now in that great day
of the feast, at the end of all of the sacrifices and all the
celebrations when the priest takes that drink offering and
he's about to pour it out as a final testimony of what God
provided for the children of Israel when they were in the
wilderness. And there was total silence amongst thousands of
people. They were all required to be
there on the Feast of the Tabernacle. Jesus stood This is what his
brethren wanted him to do. They wanted him to perform a
miracle. They wanted him to prove himself. Well, he's gonna prove
himself with his word. A wicked and perverse generation
seeketh after a sign. I'm not gonna give you a sign.
No sign is gonna be given to you except for the sign of Jonah,
which was the resurrection of Christ. And we didn't even see
that. We can only believe that by his
word. So the means by which the Lord
gives faith, faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by the word
of God. He's not going to prove himself then and he's not going
to prove himself now to the hearts of his people by some extraordinary
outward evidence of his presence or his power. He's not going
to prove himself by feeling, by circumstances, by by outward
blessings that we can look to. Men do that all the time. They
say, well, I know God's with me because he did this or he
did that. We know God's with us because he is faithful to
his word. And we believe what he says.
And most importantly, we believe what he says about himself. And
that's where saving faith is. Cannot be seen. It can only be
believed. Jesus stood. Can you just picture? It's in the temple, in Jerusalem. Total silence, the people are
about to burst into celebration. And Jesus cried with a loud voice
saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the
scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water. What a disruption of their tradition. No question about who the Lord's
declaring himself to be. Let him come unto me and drink. In the silence of that high and
somber moment, the voice of God speaks. And I pray that in the silence
of our hearts, that we will hear the voice of God. If any man
thirst, let him come unto me. For as the scripture says, he
that believeth on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers
of living water. And this he spake of the spirit,
which they that believe on him should receive." That's Pentecost. So we have here the crucifixion. We have here the water that provides
for us, just as physical water is necessary for physical life.
Our bodies cannot live without water. We're on a well at our house,
and whenever we have a hurricane, power goes out for several days.
We learned years ago, you can live without electricity, but
you can't live without water. And if we have power that's gone
for an extended period of time, we got to go somewhere else to
get some water. Got to have water. It's a necessity of life. children of Israel were dying
in the wilderness. All of this is spiritual, all
of this is allegorical, all of this is a type, it's a picture
of the spiritual truth that we live in a land that is dry and
thirsty, on a land of wilderness, a land that there is no water. The watering holes of this world,
and the world offers watering holes, lots of them. The watering
holes of this world are either a mirage or they are the polluted,
poisoning mud holes of sin that pigs wallow in. And pigs wallow
in mud holes in order to give some relief from the heat of
the day. And just as a pig might get some relief in wallowing
in a mud hole, so the flesh can find some comfort and some happiness
and some pleasure in sin for a season, for a season. But in the end, it leads to death. The wage of sin is death. That's
what the world has to offer us. That's what our flesh looks to.
We're thirsty, we're in a wilderness, where are we gonna get water? These Pharisees were looking
to their accurate celebration of the day of the Feast of Tabernacles
in hopes that somehow they would, by obeying the law of God, provide
for themselves life eternal. What a blessing it is, what a
blessing it is when God works in a man's heart, a woman's heart,
and causes them to be completely discontent. Their thirst cannot
be assuaged. They cannot find satisfaction
in all the empty promises of this world when God does a work
of grace in the heart. He causes us to see that what
we're drinking from is nothing but a broken cistern of polluted
water. And the Lord Jesus says, if any
man thirsts, let him come to me. Let him come to me. We must have living water. A couple of things about thirst.
Thirst is something that can only be satisfied with that which
is outside of the person that's thirsty. If you're tired, you can satisfy
your fatigue with rest or sleep. If you're weak, you can satisfy
your weakness with rest or exercise. If you are discouraged, you can
satisfy your discouragement with better thoughts. But if you're
thirsty, you have nothing in yourself that will meet that
need. You must go outside of yourself
to find the source of water to satisfy that thirst. You can't
produce it. You can't create it. It must
be provided for you. You have a need that you cannot
meet. Now, that's what it means to
be thirsty, if any man thirst. Lord, I've tried meeting that
need. I've tried all the things. All
the things that the world promises that will satisfy. And Lord,
I've got a thirst that none of that meets. And that's what the Lord said. If any man
thirsts, if you're thirsty, come to me. The second thing I would say
about thirst is that thirst is not something you decide you're
going to do. Thirst is an involuntary response
to dehydration. When you're dehydrated, your
body craves water. It craves liquid. You don't just
wake up and say, I think I'm thirsty. I think I'm going to
decide to be thirsty today. No. No, it's a craving that you
have that you didn't create. just came naturally because you
lacked water. And if we thirst for Christ,
it is only because the Holy Spirit, that's what the Lord is saying,
out of his belly shall flow livers of living water. And this he
spake concerning the Spirit. Apart from the Spirit of God,
no man will thirst after Christ. We will satisfy the thirst of
the flesh, and the things of the world do satisfy the cravings
of the flesh. Pleasure, prosperity, power,
popularity, all those things. And if they don't satisfy the
cravings of the flesh, The potential of having more of those things
certainly will. And so we continue to pursue
with hopes of gratifying our thirst. If I just had a little
more, I just had a little more. It is a miracle of God's grace
done by the spirit of God. When a person comes to conclude,
none of those things can meet my soul's need for thirst. like William Copper, who wrote
that hymn that we sang, trying to find some way to rid
the shame and the guilt and the burden of sin, the fear of judgment. And no amount of works on our
part will accomplish it. We try, and we come up empty. And the Lord said, in that day,
a fountain will be opened. A fountain will be opened. That woman that had an issue
of blood had spent all that she had on physicians. She spent
everything she had. And she was worse off. They only
made things worse for her. You can just imagine some of
the medical practices that would have been done 2,000 years ago.
I'm sure one of them would have been bloodletting, which, as
I understand, George Washington, our first
president, died at the hands of physicians who were who were
doing bloodletting in order to help him to cure from a cold. But that's all they knew. Well,
this woman was losing all of her, she was anemic, she didn't
have any blood. The things that they were doing
were making her worse. And that's a picture of what
we go to try to satisfy our thirst in a works religion, in a free
will religion, in the promises of this world, the empty promises,
and everything we do only makes it worse. It only makes it worse. And that's what the Lord Jesus
is doing on this eighth day of the feast. He's standing up and
he's crying with a loud voice. If any man thirst, let him come unto me. There's
no place else that you're gonna find to satisfy this thirst. There'd be no peace, there'd
be no comfort, there'd be no assurance, there'd be no knowledge
of God, there'd be no rest. David put it like this in Psalm
42, verse one. He said, as the heart, and that's
not speaking of The heart here is speaking of a deer. As the
heart panteth after the water brook, so panteth my soul after
thee, O God. If we pant after him, it's only
because he made us to do so. Otherwise, we will live on the
dry husk of this world, and we will drink the polluted waters
of this world, and we will go to our grave and enter into eternity. without the water of life, and
no, no better. No, no better. What does it mean when the Lord
said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water?
What is the belly a picture of in the Bible? It's a picture
of the flesh. That craving of the flesh that
can never be satisfied. How many times you've overindulged
yourself in a meal? And you maybe even said, oddly,
I've done it. I'm not going to eat again for a week. You know,
maybe sometime 24 hours or 36, 48 hours from now, I want to
eat again. I'm so full. And what happens? About six hours
from then, you're looking for a snack. That's the belly. It's never satisfied. It's always
hungry. It always needs more. It's never
content. And you can't feed it enough.
And all the things that promise to satisfy the flesh, they'll
never be enough. And the Lord Jesus said, you
thirsty? Come to me. Come to me. It's what the Lord told the woman
at the well in John chapter four, when he said, if you knew who
it was that saith unto you, give me to drink, you would ask him
and he would give you living water. And he said to her, he
said, the water that I give you, let's go there just a moment.
I can't quote it actually. John chapter four, just back
a couple of pages from where we are. John chapter four, look
at verse 13. Jesus answered and said unto
her, whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again. That's
the flesh, that's the belly. You drink and you drink and you
drink and you're never satisfied. You always gotta have more and
you gorge yourself with the things of this world and before you
know it, you gotta have it again. but whosoever drinketh of the
water that I shall give him shall never thirst." He wasn't talking
about not having to have water every day, physical water every
day for your body. He was likening that well that
she was going to to the things that men do to try to assuage
their thirst in this world. And he was likening himself to
this water of life, this wellspring of life, this living water. but the water that I shall give
him shall be in him a well of water springing up to everlasting
life. And the woman said, Lord, give me that water so I don't
have to come back here to this well again. Go get your husband. He had to expose her for what
she was, a sinner. And then she came and she believed,
is not this the Christ? Is not this the promised Messiah?
Is not this the one who can tell us all that we ever did and save
us? All these trips to the well that
I've been making every day to try to satisfy my thirst. Well, if I just had a little
more of it. That's all an addiction is. chasing
after something and you know, it's just the flesh, it's just
sin. Give it all the names you want but it's just man doing
what he does in order to try to gratify his flesh. And the Lord Jesus said, you
thirsty? Those things can't help you. They can't help you. The world cannot provide for
you what only I can provide. It's got to come outside of yourself.
It's got to be by an impulse. It's not a decision. It's a sign
of dehydration if you're thirsty. It's a work of the spirit of
God if you're thirsty. Soul, out of your belly shall
flow rivers of living water. And the Lord said to the woman
at the well, that out of you shall rivers
of life." In other words, coming to Christ will meet every
need that could not be met. Your need for happiness, your
need for love, your need for forgiveness, your need for salvation,
your need for hope. Your need for rest, your need
for comfort, you'll not need to go anywhere else. It won't
be like the belly of the flesh that's always going here and
there and looking for this and that, and this didn't do it,
so we'll try that. Christ alone will be all you
will need, and out of your belly will flow rivers of living water. What is a river of living water?
We have springs around here. It's that water that comes out
of the aquifer that never stops. Was it Blue Springs, 100 million
gallons a day boiling up out of that hole? That's a river
of living water versus a stagnant pool of hot water that's growing
microbes and poisons that'll kill you out of your belly. Now, is that
a one-time experience? Well, I came to Christ, so now
I've got this living water? No. Coming to Christ is something
we continually do. As you receive Christ Jesus,
the Lord, so walk ye in him. We keep coming to him. To whom?
Coming. This is not a one-time experience. We keep coming to Christ. Why? Because we're so easily distracted
from him. We're so easily tempted to think
that there's something somewhere else. And again and again and
again, the Lord reminds us. Christ. He's the only one that
can meet that need. He's the only one that forgive
your sin. He's the only one that can take away the fear and the
guilt and the shame. He's the only one that can give
you hope and comfort and rest. He's the only one that can take
away your desire to be in control of everything and be able to
rest in the one who really is in control. He's the only one. If any man
thirst, you won't need to go anywhere
else. You will be like a tree planted
by rivers of living water, and in due season you will produce
your fruit. There is a river, David said
in Psalm 46 verse one, there is a river, the streams thereof
shall make glad the city of God. What are men looking for? Happiness. Looking to be happy. And this
stream makes glad the city of God. It flows clear as crystal from
the throne of God and from the lamb. And on both sides of the
river is the tree of life. And we eat of that tree of life
now by faith. And when we cross the river,
we'll eat of the tree of life by sight, by sight. Only one condition. And that
condition God must give you, you have to be thirsty. You have to be thirsty. Whosoever is not a condition
that's to be met by a decision or by our free will. When the
Bible says whosoever believeth, the world looks at that, the
religious world looks at that, And they conclude that whoever
exercises their will, that is a condition that God has given
to us that we must meet in order to be saved. But in truth, whosoever
means just the opposite. Whosoever means that there are
no conditions in your situation or in you that either qualifies
or disqualifies you for salvation. That's what whosoever means.
Jew or Gentile, bond or free, male or female, whosoever means
that there's not anything in you that would qualify you or
disqualify you for salvation. That's what whosoever means.
Now listen to what the Lord Jesus said. If any man, any man, Whoever, doesn't matter. If any man, thirst. Not my decision. God ends his
word with this promise. Turn to me to the last chapter
of the Bible, Revelation chapter 22. Revelation chapter 22. This is exactly what the Lord
Jesus said on that great day of the feast, when he stood and
cried with a loud voice and disrupted all of their ceremonies. Verse 17, and the Spirit, that's
the Holy Spirit, and the bride, that's the church. And that's
what we're doing right now. We're calling men to come. Come. And let him that heareth say,
come. And he that is a thirst, come. And whosoever will, let him take
of the water of life freely. Whosoever's willing. If you're
willing, it's because God made you willing. He makes us willing in the day
of his power. Oh Lord, I've got to have Christ. I've got to have that fountain.
What does it mean to come? It means to do in your heart
what you would do with your feet if you were standing there on
that day in the physical presence of the body of Christ. It means to do what blind Bartimaeus
did. The master calleth thee what
blind Bartimaeus did. He dropped his outer garment
His filthy rags of his own self-righteousness on the road, and he fled to Christ,
and the Lord healed him. Bartimaeus, what would you have
me to do, Lord, that I might see? And the Lord gave him sight
immediately. And as soon as the Lord gave
him sight, what did the Lord say? Go thy way. And he went with Jesus
in the way. That's what it means to come. You don't come. With works you
don't come with something, you come in your heart, dropping
your righteousness and looking to the Lord Jesus for all the
hope of your salvation and out of your belly will flow rivers
of living water. This is the spirit and you'll
keep coming. You'll keep coming. Every time you taste that bitter
broken cistern, every time you eat of those husks that the swine
did eat, and every time you wallow in that mud hole, you'll come
again. And yours keep coming. That's
our life in this world. If any man thirst, let him come. I'll let him come again unto
me. And out of his belly will flow
rivers of living water. He'll be satisfied. He'll be
satisfied with Christ for all of his salvation. for all of
his righteousness, for all the forgiveness of his sins. He won't
try to add anything to who the Lord is or what he did. Unlike
his flesh, which can never be satisfied, he's satisfied with
Christ. Come.