I want to read a scripture, a
text of scripture to you. I enjoy the reading of the scripture. Brad has been gracious to read
for us each Sunday, and I very much appreciate it and enjoy
it. So if you want to turn with me in your Bible, to the book
of Psalms, and I'm gonna read this before the message. I'm gonna read two places in
Psalms, and I hope that you will keep these either in your memory
or as a reference point in your Bible, and go back and think
about them. In Psalm 71 and verse 16. In
Psalm 71, verse 16, I wanna read that first and then
I'm gonna have you turn to Psalm 18. But first Psalm 71 verse
16, it says, I will go in the strength of the Lord God. I will
make mention of thy righteousness, even of thine only. If God, the
Holy Spirit has done a saving work in us, When we hear that
verse, there's a resonance in our soul, like plucking the string
of an instrument, and it just vibrates at that natural resonance. Our soul has been taught that
Christ is our righteousness. And so when we read this, I will
go in the strength of the Lord God, I will make mention of thy
righteousness, even of thine only. There is no other righteousness. And it's not just a righteousness
that has no connection with us, but it is the very righteousness
of God, which is imputed, given to us by God, a gift. He says in scripture that it
is a gift of righteousness, that is the righteousness of God,
we are made the righteousness of God in Him. It's in Him, it's
His, but we are made that righteousness before God by God's gift. a gift
of grace. Now in Psalm chapter 18, a similar
thing is said there. It's a prayer of the psalmist,
and I want you to keep in mind what we just read and listen
to these words of the psalmist. In verse 20, Psalm 18, verse
20. It says, The Lord rewarded me
according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of
my hands hath he recompensed me. For I have kept the ways
of the Lord and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all
his judgments were before me, and I did not put away his statutes
from me. I was also upright before him
and kept myself from mine iniquity. Therefore hath the Lord recompensed
me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of
my hands in his eyesight. Now, if there's only one righteousness,
who is speaking in Psalm 18? It has to be the one who is righteous,
the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what we are so thankful
for. Now, if you want to turn in your Bibles to the book of
John, in John chapter 7, where we're going to have the message
for today, John chapter 7. And we're going to be looking
at three verses, verses 37, 38, and 39. And I'm going to be referring
to many other texts of scripture during this message, but let's
begin with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we pray that
for Christ's sake, you would both forgive our sins and open
our eyes to see wonderful things out of your word in the gospel
of your son, what he is, in himself, what you have appointed him to,
his worthiness, and all that he has accomplished, and that
we would so see your own glory in him, the glory of God, and
our salvation, and we would worship no other. In Jesus' name we pray,
amen. Now, in John chapter seven, in
verse 37 is where we are. This is the title of today's
message is Satisfied with Christ. Satisfied with Christ. In verse
37, it says, in the last day, that great day of the feast,
Jesus stood and cried, 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. But this spake he of the Spirit,
which they that believe on him should receive. For the Holy
Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified. He was not yet, the word given
is an italics. It doesn't mean that the Spirit
of God had never been given up to this point in time. It just
means that there was a way in which he would come, which had
not yet happened, and that way would happen because of the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ and his resurrection. But in this
text of Scripture, as we've been looking at this, you understand
that the setting of this was in a feast, a feast of tabernacles. It was a feast where thousands
of people literally would have gathered at Jerusalem. And they
hold this feast for seven days. And the last day, the eighth
day, the last day is called the great day of the feast. And on
each day, they offer sacrifices, burnt offerings, animals. And they dwell in these makeshift
tents of branches from trees. And there's great rejoicing and
great feasting because it was God's feast to them to teach
us that in the Lord Jesus Christ, by his coming into the world
and tabernacling amongst us, God manifest in the flesh, we
would be given by God to dwell in him, in Christ, and he would
dwell in us. And this would be the way that
we would receive the inheritance God promised us, which Christ
would work out for us and give to us, the inheritance of eternal
salvation. And that salvation would be given
beginning at the time when Christ rose from the dead and sent his
gospel throughout the world. a salvation that is in Christ
by His blood, and it would be proclaimed throughout time until
the end of time when the actual dwelling in Christ would be realized
in the consummation of it in glory. Now that's a synopsis
of what this feast had to do with. Christ coming in our nature,
Christ dwelling with us, we dwelling in Him, Him living in us, and
the salvation that He would accomplish in our flesh, which was signified
by all the animals offered. And the Lord Jesus Christ then
in the middle of this feast, now imagine this, thousands of
people gathered, eating, drinking, rejoicing, blowing trumpets,
doing all manner of outward ceremonies according to this feast. And
in the very last day of it, after the people had had all of this
celebration, the Lord Jesus Christ stood up and he cried. Now, the Lord, while he was on
earth, rarely spoke out in such a way. He never drew attention
to himself. But this is very unusual and
it teaches us the significance, the significance of what he's
going to say here. Jesus Christ, the God of glory,
the Lord of heaven and earth, the King of glory, stood up and
cried. He cried to be heard. And he
stood because it was that the people would see him and hear
what he had to say. That's how significant this is. This is at that time called the
Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of Ingathering, which signifies
that God is going to bring all of his people to himself as a
harvest of souls through the planting of seed, which is the
gospel preached, and the blood of Christ, by which we come to
God and are enabled to know God and dwell in Christ, and he in
us, and we would have everlasting life. And here he tells us, in
the last day of this feast, he tells us now how this life, how
this comes to us. He talks to people, he speaks
to people in this way, in a way that puts in contrast all that
they had just experienced in the eight days of this feast.
Not just the eight days of the feast, but in their entire sojourn
through that wilderness, that 40-year wilderness and being
brought out of Egypt and then brought into this land, this
promised land. He stands and he cries on this
day of this thing, which is the essential, the all-important,
the climax of everything that he is about to do and say to
us, what we need to hear. He says this, if any man thirst,
let him come to me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the
scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water. And he spoke of the spirit of
God. And that spirit would be given because Christ went to
the cross. So if we see that now, I want
to spend the rest of the time on this text of scripture of
the Lord Jesus Christ standing and crying out. And notice the
first words, the first three words, if any man. Now here I
am, and I think about this as I'm lying there sometimes at
night or half awake and half asleep, and my own self, I need
to know. I have a great desire to know
that what the salvation that Christ has accomplished is my
salvation. I have this myself personally. I have a need to know this in
myself. Because I know that if Christ
hasn't saved me, if He did not die for me, if God did not choose
me to this salvation and give it to me freely by His grace
alone, in spite of all that I am, my sin, my ignorance, and everything
about me, if He didn't do it entirely for His sake alone,
I have no hope. I need to know that God did this
and is doing this for me. And as I think about that, and
I think about telling you these things, I often wonder, I'm speaking
from God's word, with God's word, to you and to me, to my own soul,
about eternal things. About things that are true from
God in heaven. Things that we couldn't know
unless they were spoken and revealed to us. Things that are authoritative. Things that when we read it,
when we say these words, Jesus stood and cried and said, if
any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. That we're saying
that this is the truth. This is what I need. This is
what God has provided. This is what's important. This
is all important. And I think about the, if it
weren't for the fact that God had said this, the utter presumption
of a man on earth to speak for God, to claim that this is God's
own word, that would be foolish presumption and pride. And you
couldn't put any stock in it, no confidence in it, would have
no comfort from it or any hope that this was the way things
are and to depend on it through every trial in your life. But
that's what I'm saying here. This is what Jesus said. And
he stood and he cried these words. And here we have it in Revelation
chapter 22 and verse 17. It says this. At the conclusion of all of scripture,
listen to these words, and the spirit and the bride say, in
fact, let me read the verse before it, I, Jesus, have sent mine
angel or messenger, meaning John, to testify unto you these things
in the churches. And this is Jesus talking. He
says, I am the root and the offspring of David. David came from me
and I came from him. As God, David was created and
by my power, by my will, my word. But as the son of man, I was
born of David. That's what that means. the root
and offspring of David and the bright and morning star. The
Lord Jesus Christ is the sun in all of God's truth and dealings
with all mankind. The sun in the sky is temporal. It's just a shadow compared to
him. And listen to what he says in verse 17 now. Here is the
boldness God has given to us in the Word of God. And the Spirit,
the Spirit of God, and the Bride, that's the church, say, Come. And let him that heareth say,
Come. That's me, I heard. I'm telling
you, Come. And let him that is athirst Come,
that's you and me, we're thirsty, come. And whosoever will, let
him take the water of life freely. I'm constantly drinking water,
as you probably do too, I'm sure you do. And I tell Denise this
a lot. I love water, I just like it. I'll go out for a walk, and I'll
come back, and I'm thirsty. I've been sweating. It's like,
man, I'm thirsty. And I'll do something around
the house, maybe water the plant or something. And as the water
is flowing from the hose, man, I really want to take a drink
of that. I'm so thirsty. But I know that it's not good
to drink out of the hose, so I wait. And the more I wait and
think about the plants getting all this water, it just makes
me thirstier. And so I go in and I get my cup of water and
I drink it and I just drink it and I'll drink it again. It's
just so good, so good. You know what that's like? Of
course you do. We all know what it is to thirst. And you know what it is to be
without water when you're thirsty. But there are times when people
are without water where it's very distressing. And that's
when there is no water and you're thirsty. And I imagine that the
sands of the desert are that kind of a place. The wind is
blowing. The sun is beating down on you.
There's no plants. You don't know where you are.
You don't know how to get anywhere where there's water. And you
look in every direction and there is no water. and you get delirious
and you're so thirsty that you can't talk, you can barely breathe
and you fall asleep perhaps in your thirst and your weariness
and you dream and you're thinking of water and you wake up thinking
that you have a glass of water and what you have in your hand
is a cup of sand and you're thirsty. That's what he's saying here.
Our souls are thirsty. They are thirsty, but it's the
recognition of that thirst that Christ is speaking about here.
If any man thirst, let him that is a thirst come. Now, as much
as we love water, here's this person in the desert of their
soul, so thirsty, and so unable to find or produce water, to
make water appear, they can't see it, they can't get at it,
they can't produce it. That's a thirsty person. That's
who we're talking about here. Someone who is thirsty, and if
they don't get a drink, will die, and imagines, they think
about water all the time, it's all they can think of. And they
know that if they don't get it, they're going to die. That's
our souls. And in this world, there is no
drink for our souls. There is no drink, nothing to
quench our souls in this world. Not in us, not outside of us,
nothing in this world except right here. For our souls, there's
only one water. One life, one life giving water,
it's what the Lord Jesus Christ says right here. And in John chapter 4, let me
just read this to you. In John chapter 4, he said in
verse 14, 13, Jesus answered the woman, after he told her
to give him a drink. And she said, why are you asking
me for a drink? I'm a woman and I'm from Samaria. And are you greater than Jacob,
our father? Of course he is. But he says
this in verse 13 of John four, Jesus answered and said to her,
whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again. That's telling
us that in this life, All that we seek for in order to quench
the thirst of our souls burning will make us thirsty again. It
will cause our mouth to feel okay. It might refresh us emotionally,
but it will not help our soul. Our soul will remain like that
man in the desert who has nothing to drink but sand and wind. completely
parched and unable and dying without a drink. But he says
in verse 14, but whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give
him. All right. So this is water.
We can't produce it. Christ must give it. And it's
a gift because he gives it. We don't earn it. That I shall
give him shall never thirst. If you or I have drunk in our
souls because we have trusted Christ as all of our souls need,
our salvation, our life, our righteousness, our peace with
God, all that we need in our soul for life now and for eternal
life, if we've trusted Him, then we will not hunger or thirst
for any other We won't have this question that says, well, isn't
there something more? No, that's the whole point here. Do I have to do something? No,
it's all in Christ, you see. He gives this drink and it's
Him. He says, whoever comes to Him. Now, back in John 7, he says,
if any man thirsts, any person, if anyone thirsts. Now, you know
that thirst is something that we're all familiar with, but
in our soul, we have a thirst, but we're unaware of it until
the Lord himself makes us aware of it. And I'm often thinking these
thoughts in my own self that Do I really thirst? I mean, do
I? And I come to this verse that
says, if any man thirsts, and I wonder, do I thirst? And what
if I don't? Well, then I'm thirsty to thirst.
I want to have whatever is required to make this water that Christ
is to his people my own drink. I want to be thirsty that way.
And so I find myself even thirsting for the thirst I need to see
my need of Christ. Do you thirst that way? You see,
that's what the Lord said in John 16, when he said that when
the spirit of Christ would come, when the spirit of God would
come, he would convince the world of sin because they don't believe
on him. So we have a need, and we're
convinced by the Spirit of God we don't meet that need, which
is to believe on Christ. So what does he tell us to do
then? Come. You come to me, he said, and
drink. You come to me. And the qualification
for coming to Christ is the lack of qualifications, you see? We don't have faith, so we come
to him for the faith. We don't have obedience, so we
come to him for the obedience. And this is what he's teaching
us when he stands up and cries here in the middle of this feast
where there's so much plenty in order to stimulate and to
make people in their physical senses and emotions have some
pleasure and satisfaction. No, he says you have a thirst
and this is a thirst you need You need to have met, and I'm
the only one who can meet this. Faith, it's not in us. Righteousness,
we can't produce it. Peace with God, we can't make
it happen. Joy in Christ is only in Him. The Lord is my strength. I have
no strength. So the qualifications are no
qualifications. is thirst of soul. In Ezekiel
chapter 36, this was part of the blessing that God promised. He says in Ezekiel chapter 36,
notice this. He says, when the Lord does this,
then shall you remember your own evil ways and your doings
that were not good. and shall loathe yourselves in
your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations." We
have served idols. We invented things that we thought
would pacify and give us pleasure and satisfaction and peace and
joy. And the Lord says, that's an
idol. That's an abomination. And then he says, but when I
give you this grace, you'll remember your evil ways and your doings,
they were not good. And you shall loathe yourselves
in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations, meaning
that you served and worshiped other things than Christ. And
so we see here, if any man thirsts, something of the nature of this
thirst. What do we thirst for? Well,
in the Psalms, In Psalm 42, for example, he says, my soul thirsteth
for God. As the deer longs for the water,
so my soul thirsts for the living God. We thirst for God. And yet, we don't have him because
of our sin, because of our unbelief. because of our ignorance, because
we're confident and comfortable with our own imagined comforts. We can find it. We can buy it.
We can build it. We can make relationships. We
can do all sorts of things that give us some measure of peace
and joy. It's all fading, temporal, empty, and a diversion to what
we truly need, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. So the first thing
we thirst for is God, God himself. Why does he start there? Because
everything is in him. God is independent of all, and
yet he gives to all. We produce nothing that wasn't
given to us. All of our needs must come from
Him. He is the one who created all
things. He is the eternal uncreated God. He's the all wise. We are the
all foolish. He's the all good. We are not
good. He is the only one righteous.
We are not righteous. You see, we're the parched desert
sand. And He is the fountain of living
water. And without that water of life,
we die. And the life that He gives is
the understanding, the knowledge of who He is in the Lord Jesus
Christ. It is the overflowing abundance
of eternal life in knowing God in Christ. So we thirst for God. We thirst for God because only
God can save us. Only God can save a sinner. It
takes the almighty power of God to save a sinner because we're
dead in sins. And it takes the almighty power
of God to set aside his wrath and satisfy his justice and to
uphold his truth and to will, sovereignly will his grace to
save us. It takes God. If God doesn't
save us, we will be lost. And so we thirst for God, don't
we? Only He can save us. And we thirst to know that God
has done what God requires to save us. If God isn't satisfied,
if we don't have what is given to us from God, if we don't know
that God is behind this, that God's power is in this, that
He won't change and retake back what He's given. He'll give us
life and sustain that life and give us eternal life. And He'll
give us what pleases Him, what brings Him glory. He'll give
us His own righteousness, the righteousness of God given to
us. Unless we know this is of God
and it's from Him and it's His given to us to be ours, then... We won't be satisfied, will we?
We'll always wonder, did it fall short? And we would be right
in thinking that. Because salvation is of the Lord. God is my salvation. That's why we thirst for God,
you see. God alone can save us. We need to know that God has.
We need to know the living God. That's what we thirst for. And
he says in Amos 8, verse 11, that there would be a famine
of the word, a famine not of bread, but of the word, of hearing
the word of God. So we need to hear from God.
So we thirst to hear. If God has saved you by the Lord
Jesus Christ, you have a desire to constantly, continuously hear
from him about him and about his saving grace in the Lord
Jesus Christ. This is the way it is. There was a hymn. I put a quote from it in the
bulletin. Let me see if I can find it here.
Written by John Newton. I can't even find it. What did I do with it? I thought I put it over here.
Oh, here it is. Sorry, I was going to read this
to you. Let me read this to you. He says, along these lines that
we thirst for God, in the bulletin, what think you of Christ is the
test. What think you of Christ is the
test. To try both your state and your
scheme, you cannot be right in the rest unless you think rightly
of him. As Jesus appears in your view,
as he is beloved or not, so God is disposed to you, and mercy
or wrath are your lot. Some take him a creature, to
be a man or an angel at most. Sure, these have not feelings
like me, nor know themselves wretched and lost. So guilty,
so helpless am I, I durst not confide in his blood, nor on
his protection rely, unless I were sure he is God. Do you see that? John Newton
is saying that the Lord Jesus Christ must be God in order to
save me, because my sin is so bad. In Psalm 25, verse 11, he
says, For thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it
is great. God will be glorified in saving
his people, and only God will be glorified, and that's what
his word teaches us and tells us. So the second thing we thirst
for is the word of God. We thirst for God. We want to
know that he has saved us. We want to know that it's his
work, that nothing short of what God has required and provided
is provided in himself. God is my salvation. And then
we read in scripture of all the things that are required in order
to save a sinner. God must choose us. It must be
His will, His sovereign will. We must be holy or we can't see
the Lord. We must have the righteousness
that's a perfect righteousness in order for Him to justify us.
He must save us from our sins. We must have the wisdom of God
in order to understand the truth and believe and hope and love
Him. We must have everything that
God requires of us. And this is what we hope for.
In Isaiah chapter 12, look at Isaiah, if you would please,
in Isaiah chapter 12. And if you would rather just
listen, that's fine. Isaiah chapter 12, listen to
these words. I encourage you to refer to this
chapter often. In verse one of Isaiah 12, in
that day thou shalt say, now this is a prophecy of what God's
people would say because of his grace. Through the gospel preached
to them, they would understand, they would believe this, and
now they're saying the same thing from their heart. This is what
they say. Oh Lord. And it's capital, all
capitals, L-O-R-D. That means Jehovah, the Lord
God. Oh Lord. I will praise thee. Why? Though thou wast angry with
me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortest me. Behold,
God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid. You see, that's a soul that has
drunk deeply. For the Lord Jehovah is my strength,
therefore I have all strength. and he is my song, he also is
become my salvation. Notice, therefore with joy shall
you draw, what, water out of the wells of salvation. When the Lord Jesus Christ says,
if any man thirst, what is it that we thirst for? We thirst
for God. We thirst for his word that he
would speak to us concerning our salvation. He is our salvation. He became our salvation. He accomplished
our salvation. If any man thirst, let him come
unto me, Jesus said, and drink. Drink. Think about this. You
are, your lips are blistered and cracked and dry. And there's
probably blood on them. And you're foul and filthy because
you haven't had anything to wash with. And your face is swollen,
and your tongue is swollen, and the Lord Jesus says, drink. Come to me and drink. Drink as much as you want. Drink as much as you can. Take
it freely. Drink. What is he saying here? You find
everything in him and you take it from him. By faith, you are
taking from him what your soul needs. You don't have it in yourself. You're unworthy of it. If you
were to touch the water, you would think you'd make it filthy
like you are yourself. And yet you cannot taint the
water by drinking it. You cannot change Him. You take
it like a sinner coming for health and healing, like a dead man
needing life. And you come to Him and you take
from Christ. Take it, drink it, come to me. He says in verse 38, this is
what it means to drink and to come. He that believeth on me,
as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers
of living water. To believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ is what it means when it says to come and take. Can
you walk or crawl or transport yourself through some kind of
means to get to Christ? No. You believe him, you hear
his word. and you lay hold of it, you trust
Him. And trusting Him, you thirst
for no other. Because when you trust Christ,
you're taking what He has said about what He has done, and His
worthiness and will to save sinners, and you're saying, that is all
of my salvation. It gives me all of the peace
with God that God provides and gives to sinners, and joy, and
hope, and life. and even makes me love Him. If
I don't have faith, I come to Him for it. If I don't have love,
I come to Him for it. I come to Christ, and I find
in Him everything, and I take it. I'm unworthy, but because
of the warrant of His Word, I take freely from Him. Take it freely,
as he says in Revelation 22, 17, that him that is a thirst
come and let him take of the water of life freely. You won't find a reason in yourself.
If you look for a reason in yourself, you're not thirsty. When you
find no reason and you find no water for your soul in yourself
or in any other or in this world, then you know this word from
Christ about who He is and what He has done and what He will
do for those who believe on Him. That's your life. And that's
it. And you live in hope that what
He said will be eternally secure and that it will be all that
you need. There's nothing in this world that can provide one
drop of soul water. Nothing. But the Lord Jesus Christ
is an ocean, a fountain open for sin. And for uncleanness,
he says in Zechariah chapter 13 verse 1, a fountain. I am the fountain, he says in
Jeremiah 2.13, of living water. And what are we? We're our soul,
our bones, everything about us is dried, sinful, parched, ruined,
wasted. We have no hope. But with Christ,
we have every reason to hope. His own word gives it to us.
Now listen to these words by Joseph Hart. He says, come ye
sinners, poor and needy, weak and wounded, sick and sore. Jesus,
ready, stands to save you, full of pity, love, and power. Come
you thirsty. Come and welcome God's free bounty. That means his abundance, his
riches of glory and grace. God's free bounty glorify true
belief and true repentance, every grace that brings you nigh. Come
you weary, heavy laden, lost and ruined by the fall. If you
wait, if you tarry till you're better, you will never come at
all. I'm waiting to feel that this
is true for myself. You'll never come that way. I'm
waiting to have the evidence that I can have confidence in
Christ. You'll never have it. You'll never find it. I'm waiting
till I am able to say like other people, I'm a Christian because
of what I've been able to do. You'll never, never come to Christ
that way. If you don't come as sinful and
utterly without strength in need of everything and find it in
him alone, then you haven't come and you aren't coming. But if
you have come that way, then you will always be satisfied
with him. There's another hymn I like,
it goes this way. Amazing grace will always be
my song of praise. For it was grace that bought
my liberty. I do not know why he came to
love me so. He looked beyond my faults and
saw my need. Now, for me, that's very comforting
because I often pray, Lord, see my need. Answer my need. Address, come and be the satisfaction,
that fountain, that ocean of drink for my soul that I need
as you see it because I don't see it as I ought to. He goes
on in the same song, he says, I shall forever lift my eyes
to Calvary to view the cross where Jesus died for me. How
marvelous the grace that caught my falling soul. He looked beyond
my fault and saw my need. Let's pray. Lord, we pray the
Lord Jesus Christ would be all of our soul's drink, that everything
we need we would find in him. and we would come to him and
we would take from him by faith because he said it. Lord, we
pray you would own and honor your own word, your own truth,
that you would be glorified because you are pleased to be the complete
salvation of those who have nothing except what would condemn them
in your presence and yet in the Lord Jesus Christ and by his
precious blood you teach us to come with all boldness because
of his blood and by his blood alone and so we pray Lord make
it clear to us As the Lord Jesus stood and cried, so stand and
cry to our hearts and give us life, cause us to come, and to
the degree that we can understand our own thirst, Lord, give us
that. But most of all, cause us to drink of Christ and Him
crucified and to desire Him and to constantly resort to him for
the maintenance of this life and for the increase of it. In
Jesus name we pray for his glory alone. Amen.