I want you to turn this morning to John chapter 7. John chapter 7. And I'll tell you what I call
this message. I'll give you my title. It is simply a very brief question. Is anyone thirsty? Is anyone thirsty? Look down with me in verse 37. where 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. What was the occasion upon which the Lord spoke these
amazing words? It says it was the last day of
a particular feast among the Jews. It was the last day of
the Feast of the Tabernacles. And it was the most festive day,
the most joyous day among them. And as a last thing, the priests
would go to the stream Siloam, and they would gather water,
and they would bring it and pour it on the altar, and there would
be singing, there would be rejoicing, There would be great joy among
the people, and they would sing the words of Isaiah when he said,
therefore, with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of
salvation. They would repeat this song,
these words. and they would be joyous and
happy. But it's in the midst of that
atmosphere that the Lord stands and he makes a statement, or
rather asks a question and says to them, if any man thirsts, Let him come
unto me and drink." Isaiah again had been used of
God to write these words. When the poor and needy seek
water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst,
I, the Lord, will hear them. I, the God of Israel, will not
forsake them." And these Jews, though they knew
and believed the letter of such sayings, they did not know the
spiritual message. And so Christ is saying to them,
if after all this, all these feast days, all this feasting,
all this external rejoicing, all this ceremony, all this religious
exercise, If there is somebody that is
still thirsty, who has not been satisfied with
all these things, let them come unto me and drink. As a matter of fact, the Lord
Jesus Christ often said such things as that. He said, come unto me all ye
that are weary and heavy laden. If you're weary and heavy laden,
I'll give you rest. He said, if you're hungry, come
to me. I am the bread of life. I'll satisfy you. I'm the bread
of life. All these are the spiritual conditions
of those who are coming to Christ. On this occasion, he asked, is
there anybody still yet thirsty? And not only is that not a thirst
for water, but it is not the thirst of the flesh in general
which can never be satisfied. You see, this is what false religion
seeks to satisfy, the flesh. But the natural man, the natural
heart, the natural flesh is described in the book of Proverbs
by the horse leech. I don't know exactly what the
horse leech was, but I think it was a parasite that sucked
the blood out of the animals. He says, the horse leech has
two daughters crying, give, give. There are three things that are
never satisfied, yea, four things that say not it is enough. He's likening that to the human
heart, to our flesh, to the way we are by nature. Always saying,
give, give. Never saying it is enough. That's the way that we are in
the flesh. And although the world offers
us very many things, they never satisfy. The world has to offer
fame and fortune. and sex and money and all the
other earthly comforts, all the other earthly pleasures, all
the things that appeal to the flesh, to what we are by nature,
what we are in our pride, what we long for. He says in John,
for all that is in the world, The lust of the flesh, the lust
of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the father, but
is of the world. That which we're told will satisfy
the eye, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, as was used
in the temptation of Eve. Adam and Eve fell under that
promise from Satan that they would be satisfied with these
things. But they weren't. And he lied. But the trouble is, religion
in our day, false religion in every age, offers the very same
things. They offer things that appeal
to our flesh. They offer prosperity. They offer happiness. Who doesn't
want happiness? They offer fulfillment. They offer glory in rewards. They offer health. They offer
family betterment. They offer heaven. They offer recognition. They offer, don't you want to
live forever in this eternal resort spa called heaven? They offer crowns. They offer various rewards. They offer golden mansions. They offer 70 virgins. Always something that pertains
to the satisfaction and gratifying of the flesh. But this is what the Lord says.
And he spoke it through Jeremiah a long time ago. He said, for
my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain
of living waters, and have hewed them out cisterns broken cisterns
which can hold no water. They've forsaken me, the fountain,
the source of living water, and they've not only done that, they
have made for themselves these cisterns by which they are going
to hold water, but their broken cisterns, they don't hold any
water. And none of these things can
satisfy the soul. You see, the Bible says that
man is a soul that has a body. But the way we look at it naturally
is we are a body that has a soul. But it says that God breathed
into Adam and he became a living soul. So none of these things,
none of these offerings, none of these ways, they ever satisfy
that which we are, first of all, a soul. A soul. This week, I just happened to
come across something on one of the social media parts of the internet. And this struck me because it
was speaking of a famous Irish band that supposedly had a good
version of a gospel song. Well, when I saw that word gospel,
I took notice. And so I clicked on it. And I
read the lyrics of the song, and immediately I knew it was
not a gospel song. I knew by the title. Because the title was, I Still
Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. In other words, all through the
song is The person seeing this and doing this and feeling this
and all that, but I still haven't found what I'm looking for. That's
a lost person. That's not a gospel song. The
unsatisfied person is a lost person. Because number one, they've
been looking for satisfaction, fulfillment, contentment, whatever
you want to call it. They've been looking for it in
the wrong place. And that's their thing. I still
haven't found what I'm looking for. I've got money. I've got fame. I've got glory,
like those very individuals had. I've experienced this, that,
and the other, but I'm still not satisfied because they don't
satisfy my soul. I'm still not satisfied. I still haven't found what I'm
looking for. But Christ's words here, or a kind of fulfillment of what
the prophet of God wrote about him. Turn over in Isaiah chapter
55. In Isaiah chapter 55, Here is God, and most particularly
God the Son, as he has come in human flesh and on this occasion
says it, but listen to what he says. Ho, every one that thirsteth. Come ye to the waters. And he that hath no money, come
ye, buy and eat. Yea, come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price. Something that's being talked
about here has to be of grace. Without money, without price. You say, well, water's free.
I'm afraid not. I never thought I'd pay $1.50
for a bottle of water, but I do it about every week. But he says here, come, and without
money and without price, come and buy and eat and drink. Wherefore do you spend your money
for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which
satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me. and eat ye that which is good,
and let your soul delight itself in fatness." You can't say that in your flesh. Most every one of us has eat
to the point that we can't eat anymore. and we got as big as
we can, what do we want? More food. But he says here, you can eat
as much you want in this. You can let your soul delight
itself in fatness. Incline your ear and come unto
me. Here and your soul shall live,
and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure
mercies of David. What's that? That greater David,
the Lord Jesus Christ. Behold, I have given him for
a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people.
David was a type of Christ. He says, come to him, come to
him and drink. Nehemiah said, thou gavest also
thy good spirit to instruct them and withheldest not thy manner
from their mouth and gave them water for their thirst. God always gives his people water
for their thirst. And this thirst cannot be satisfied
by anything in us or anything produced by us. When will we
ever learn that? It is not in things. It is not
in experiences. It is not in all of these external
things that Satan has deceived us into thinking that will satisfy
our souls. It's not in any of those things. But for this thirst to be quenched,
we do have to partake of something from the outside. Just like when we drink water,
we have to partake of something outside of ourselves, and this
is showing that we have to partake of Christ spiritually. In John 6, Christ said something
and they all just walked away from him, for the most part,
except for a handful. He said, thou gave it, I mean,
he said, verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh
of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. They just walked away. They'd
seen miracles. They'd eaten of the fish and
the loaves, but they just walked away from him. And to just a
handful of people, he said, will you also go away? They said, no, Lord. Where can
we go? You've got the words of life.
You've got the water of life. You've got that which we cannot
find satisfying our thirst except you, what we get from you. And this is believing on Christ. This is looking to Him alone. This is relying on Him alone
for salvation and for everything. You see, when it says, He that
believeth, it is actually He who is believing. Them which
are believing. It's not that we do this just
one time. I had several drinks of water
yesterday. But you know why I woke up this
morning thirsty? I'm expecting tomorrow morning
to wake up thirsty. I'm expecting to need more water
throughout the day. In other words, the more it seems
like the struggle and the work and everything, the more I need
the water. And God has used this most basic
and elemental thing for human life to show us how much we need
Christ, the water of life. You see, Christ is the promised and prophesied
water. He's not, as some would like,
the fountain of youth. He's the water of life. Turn over to Isaiah 32 just a
moment. Isaiah 32 and verse 1. This is a prophecy about Christ,
the Messiah. He says, Behold, a king shall
reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment, and a
man, singular man. shall be as a hiding place from
the wind, as a covert from the tempest, and as rivers of water
in a dry place, as the shadow of a rock, great
rock, in a weary land. A man, he's a hiding place. He's a covert from the tempest. He's as rivers of water in a
dry place. And all throughout the Old Testament,
we get these same kind of prophecies concerning him, such as in Isaiah
44. He says, for I will pour water
upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground. I will pour my spirit upon thy
seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring, and they shall spring
up as the grass, as willows by the water courses. One shall
say, I am the Lord's, and another shall call himself by the name
Jacob, and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord,
and surname himself by the name of Israel." Now, I wish I had
time to stop right there. Because all of those are pictures
of someone who's a believer. God's elect, right there. But
the number one thing that I want you to see in them is that he
says he will pour water upon him that is thirsty. Listen to this. Isaiah also,
and the Lord shall guide thee continually and satisfy thy soul
in draw and make fat thy bones, and thou shalt be like a watered
garden, like a spring of water, whose waters fail not." God, in His grace, makes His
people, just like they're called in the Song of Solomon, His garden. And his garden will never wither,
will never dry out, will never, though there be all around them
this spiritual drought, they will never dry out and die because
they're a well-watered garden. They have Christ. They have the
water of life. And when you look in our text
in verse 39, it says, it says, but this he spake of the spirit
which they that believe or they that are believing on him should
receive for the Holy Ghost was not yet given because that Jesus
was not yet glorified. If you notice that word given
there is an italics. It was added by the transcript
translators. But the truth is the Holy Spirit
had already been given, and all the Old Testament saints, the
way they believed was because they were born of God's Spirit.
The word really should probably be come because he had not come
as he was to come at Pentecost. That is to Jew and Gentile. and a multitude of people revealing
Jesus Christ to them. But he says in verse 38, he that
believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall
flow rivers of living water. Now what does that mean, belly? Well, you have to understand
the word in the light of how it is used in the Old Testament. It means the inner man. It means the spirit of man. The spirit of man is the candle
of the Lord searching all the inward parts of the belly. It's who we are. He says he'd be living water. Out of his belly shall flow rivers
of living water. Let me ask you this. How then
does the Holy Spirit make Christ to be this living water to us? Well, Christ himself answered
that. He said, he shall take, that
is when he is sent, when he comes, if I, it's expedient that I go
away from you, for you, because when, if I go away from you,
I'll send the comforter, the spirit of truth, and he shall
take the things of mine and show them to you, reveal them to you. He reveals Christ and Him crucified. Now, this is the living water
now we're talking about. This is what the sinner, dead
in trespasses and sin, needs to live. Needs to live before
God. Needs to satisfy their souls. How does he do it? We'll turn
over to the book of Exodus. The book of Exodus, because this
is all an allusion in part to what we find all throughout the
Old Testament, but particularly this. In Exodus chapter 17, It says, and all the congregation
of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of sin after
their journeyings according to the commandment of the Lord and
pitched in Rephidim and there was no water for the people to
drink. There wasn't any water. Can you
imagine this in a desert place and there's no water to drink?
That's where every one of us are. We're in a desert place
spiritually. All around us is death and drought
and everything that is against God. There's nothing out here
in us to satisfy our souls. We're like these people. It says,
Wherefore the people did chide with Moses, and said, Give us
water that we may drink. And Moses said unto them, Why
chide ye with me? wherefore do you tempt the Lord? And the people thirsted there
for water. And the people murmured against
Moses and said, wherefore is this that thou hast brought us
up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our cattle with
thirst? And Moses cried unto the Lord,
saying, What shall I do unto this people? They be almost ready
to stone me. And the Lord said unto Moses,
Go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders
of Israel, and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take
in thine hand, and go. Behold, I will stand before thee
there upon the rock in Horeb, and thou shalt smite the rock,
and there shall come water out of it that the people may drink. He said, Moses, take that same
staff that you smoked the river with. And you go down to the rock at
Horeb, and he said, strike the rock with that staff, and water
will come out. That water was their salvation,
physically. Without it, they die of thirst
in the wilderness. It's the necessary thing. It's
the most necessary thing that you need physically. You can
live a lot longer without food than you can without water. Yes,
they were. Thousands of them. And God said,
Moses, strike the rock. And out of that rock, there flowed
rivers of water. That rock was Christ crucified.
It was a picture and a type of what was necessary for you and
I to have the water of life. But that work is a finished,
completed, one-time work. So we don't strike the rock anymore.
but rather turn over to the book of Numbers now, to the book of
Numbers, chapter 20, because the occasion here is
very much like the occasion when they were there and he struck
the rock at Oreb. They were dying of thirst. They were murmuring. But look at what verse 7 says. And the Lord spake unto Moses,
saying, Take the rod, gather thou the assembly together, thou
and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their
eyes, and it shall give forth his water, and thou shalt bring
forth to them water out of the rock, so shalt thou give the
congregation and their beasts to drink. And Moses took the
rod from before the Lord as he commanded him, And Moses and
Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and
he said unto them, Here now, ye rebels, much we fetch you
water out of this rock. And Moses lifted up his hand,
and he smote, and with his rod he smote the rock twice. And
the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and
the beast also. But there's a problem. Moses struck the rock and he
struck it twice when God said, speak to the rock. You see, the Bible says Christ
was once offered for sins, that he appeared once in the end of
the age to put away sin. And so he never again is to bear
what he bore on the cross or suffer that death, which was
pictured in smiting the rock. When He hung on that cross, that
was simply the rod of God's justice and wrath smiting Him so that we could have the water
of life. And He never is to be smitten
again. We speak to the Rock. It says, and the Lord spake unto
Moses and Aaron, because you believed me not to sanctify me
in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not
bring this congregation into the land which I have given them. In other words, God forbid Moses
and Aaron to take the people of Israel into the Promised Land
because of their disobedience to God. But even their disobedience
to God on this occasion didn't stop the water from blowing
out of the rock. Didn't stop God's mercy. Didn't
stop God's grace. That water flowed out, irregardless
of the disobedience of Moses, the disobedience of Aaron, regardless
of who or what, that water flowed out because the rock had already
been smitten. Justice had already been satisfied. And that's the way it'll be to
all the Christ people. That living water is going to
flow to them, irregardless of the false preachers, or irregardless
of those lies that are told on God, irregardless of all those
fleshly things that are offered in the name of God. God's going
to find His people and there's going to be a stream of grace
that continues to flow to them, a stream of this living water
that will satisfy their soul and bring them to life. You think that's a wild preacher's misuse of Old
Testament texts? Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4
that all of these people as they picture God's people did all
drink the same spiritual drink for they all drank of that spiritual
rock that followed them and that rock was Christ. But it says many of them But with many of them, God was
not well pleased. While they drank this physical
water, that did not mean that they all drank the spiritual
water of the one that it represented. They didn't all believe. As a
matter of fact, Every one of them that came out of Egypt,
with the exception of two, died in unbelief. Caleb and Joshua. They believed. They took part
of that physical water just like everybody else. But they took
part of the spiritual water. They look to Christ, the promised
Messiah, the work of righteousness that He would perform. They look
to God for all their acceptance with God. So the Lord Jesus says on this
occasion, if any man thirst, let him come. He doesn't say, let him work
hard. He doesn't say, let him quit
something that he's doing. He doesn't say, let him make
all the host of preparations that men insist upon. He doesn't say, let him feel
his sin. He doesn't say, let him prostrate
himself before the law of God, such as I hear preachers say. He said, let him come and drink. I'll tell you, if you're thirsty, number one, you don't have to
make any preparations. You just drink. As a matter of fact, if you're
really thirsty, you have to drink. You can't
stop yourself. Nobody else can stop you. If
there's water, you have to drink if you're thirsty. And if you're thirsty in this
sense, it's because God has made you thirsty. I've about worn out this illustration
over the years I've preached to you so long, but I saw a documentary years ago
in Africa, about Africa, when there was almost no water there. And these villagers would take
a monkey, And they would take salt and
rub it inside of that monkey's mouth. And they would turn him
loose. And they would follow him, because
he knew where the water was. And they'd follow him to where
he got the water at, and they'd get water. Anybody who has this thirst,
God's put salt in his mouth. God's shown him his need. God's
shown her that she's a sinner. God showed her, taught her the
necessity of having the water of life. He says, come and drink. There was a woman who was a great
sinner. I say she was a great sinner.
I don't really read that there was much differentiating sinners,
but she was a sinner. She wasn't any greater sinner
than the men in her life that had used her But she went to the well one
morning. She couldn't even come when the
other women came because she was so shameful. But she came
to the water, and it says, and Jacob's well
was there. I remember the first time I read
that, I mean really read it, when it said Jacob's well was
there. And I thought about Jacob, what
a sinner, what a man of, supplanter, liar, you name it. It said Jacob's
well was there. And the words that came into
my mind and heart were, yes, he was. God gives us Jacob as an example
of the grace of God. Jacob's well was there. Yes,
he was. Well, this woman comes to the
well, and there is Christ. There's the Lord Jesus. And he tells her, give me to drink. Give me something to drink. And she said to him, How is it
that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me which am a woman
of Samaria, for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans?' And Jesus answered her and said, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee,
Give me to drink, Thou wouldest have asked of him,
and he should have given thee living water. I ask you for a drink of the
water from that well, but if you knew who I was, if you had
any understanding about who I was, you'd ask of me, and I'd give
you a drink of living water. She said, Art thou greater than
our father Jacob, which gave us this well, and drank thereof
himself, and his children, and his cattle? Jesus answered and
said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again. But whosoever drinketh of the
water that I shall give, him shall never thirst. But the water
that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing
up into everlasting life." She said, Give me this water that I thirst
not, neither come hither to draw." She still didn't understand what
he was saying. So just to show her own need,
she said, he said, go and call thy husband
and come hither. Go get your husband, come hither.
She said, sir, I have no husband. And he said to her, that's true. You have no husband, but you've
had five husbands. And the one that you're staying
with right now is not your husband. That's a fact. He knows what
we are. And what he says that we are
is our condition. We're sinners. She said, Sir,
I perceive you're a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this
mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is a place where men
ought to worship. Jesus said unto her, Woman, believe
me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor
at Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship you know not what.
We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But
the hour cometh. And now is. It now is for God's
people, it now is for you. When the true worshipers shall
worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father
seeketh such to worship Him. God is spirit. They that worship
Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. And she said, I know that Messiah,
when he comes, which is called Christ, when he's come, he'll
tell us all these things. And he said, I that speak to
you am he. Now, that's all he had to do. because he gave her faith to
believe that he was the Messiah. That he was that living water
that he was talking about. And she drank. She left her water pot. She ran
into the city. And she said to the men who were
gathered there, the women wouldn't listen to her. Come see a man which told me
all things that ever I did. Is not this the Christ? Is not this the Christ? You see it says here, he's rivers
of living water. He's not mercy drops around you
or falling. He's rivers. I always used to ride in other
states and it would say such and such river, such and such
river, and it'd be like you couldn't hardly see it. It was a little
trickling stream. They called it a river. In our
county, we got a river. I mean it's a broad river, leads
to the sea. And Christ is the water to satisfy
the soul because he is the water to cleanse us from sin. By himself purged, cleansed. our sins. He washed us in His
own blood. He pronounces us righteousness
in Himself all because of who He is and what He has done. Paul said, but of Him, that is,
of God. Are you in Christ Jesus who of
God is made into us, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
redemption, everything. Is anyone thirsty? If you're thirsty for fleshy
things, I can tell you, you'll never be satisfied. You'll die
unsatisfied. You'll spend eternity unsatisfied,
longing, wanting, having need. But if you're thirsty, he said, come into me and drink. If you've not found anything
that satisfies you, and you haven't, come under me and drink." And
if you have this kind of thirst, God gave it. He said, blessed
is the man that hungers and thirsts after righteousness, for he shall
be filled. If you thirst after righteousness,
to be right with God. If you thirst after forgiveness,
if you thirst out of peace with God, if you thirst after cleansing,
if you thirst out of knowing the true God, if you thirst for
eternal life, when you come down to the end
of this book, In Revelation 22, it says, and
the Spirit and the Bride. Well, we know who the Spirit
is, the Holy Spirit. And the Bride is the Church,
the true Church, the people of God. So that means that the Spirit
of God and the true people of God, they're saying the same
things. Say, come. Let him that is a
thirst come, and whosoever will, let him take of the water of
life freely." No matter who you are, where you're from, black
or white, male or female, young or old, Jew or Gentile, all those. He says, if you thirst. Let him come and take of the
water of life freely. Freely. Oh, it's amazing verses. If any
man come, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that is believing on me, as
the scripture saith, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water. In him, all these truths of Christ,
all these promises, they flow like a river in a believer to
the satisfaction of his soul. No matter what the circumstances,
no matter what his health, No matter what his problems, there
is always in him that satisfaction, that blessing, that thrill of
knowing that he has all things in Christ no matter what happens. No matter what happens. Give me a drink. You see, this thirst, when God
creates it in a person, it doesn't take away all those other thirsts,
the thirst of the flesh, because we're still in the flesh. But where they don't satisfy
and can never be satisfied, Christ satisfies this thirst, it's soul
thirst. The hymn writer said it right,
create soul thirst in me. I pray he'll create soul thirst
in all of us and then satisfies with Christ. Our Father, we thank
you this day. We pray that you would take your
word and by your spirit bring it home to our hearts. Give us this soul thirst and
satisfy it with your son. For we pray and we ask all things
in the name of Christ. Amen. Amen.