If you would, turn with me in
your Bibles to John chapter 7. John chapter 7. We'll begin with verse 37. It'll
be verses 37 through 39. One thing that We as human beings, we tend to
forget just how dependent we are upon God and his blessings. The one in particular is rain. When I worked for the railroad,
I'd run from Portsmouth, Ohio to Columbus, Ohio, and there
were four graineries. One in Chilcothee, Kingston,
Ohio, Circleville, Asheville, Ohio. And those of us that worked
in portions would take care of these granaries. And grain had
a season. Each year, about October, this
time of year, the farmers would bring in their corn that they
harvested, they'd sell it to these granaries, and the granaries
were loaded on railcars, and they were booming at this time,
because they needed us to bring them empty so they could load,
and then get them out of the way so they could bring more
empty. blooming this time of year for harvest. Now, we liked
that for our workers. We stood to make a lot of overtime,
you know, it was good. And a good season would go from
about October through January, and a real good season might
even go up into March. We'd work like crazy from October
through January. And these farmers would You see
up here around Waverly, Circleville, these big farms, lots of good
land, thousands of acres of grain. These men had to slide a river
along it. They could pull that water out
and take care of the rain and make sure their plants were fed
water. They had these really big, I
don't even know what you call them, they just looked like beams.
They'd whirl out around on wheels and they could fertilize many,
many acres of their grain. Well, this particular year, a
few weeks ago, we were headed to Chillicothe, and I noticed
there between Waverly and Piketon, the corn was only about this
tall. It was about four feet. It was
already brown. It was ready to be harvested.
Normally, it's twice that tall, seven, eight feet tall. These
farmers, like I said, they'll do everything they can to make
sure their plants are watered and grow. But look at this, in
particular, this year. It wasn't that good. No matter
what they did, and they have a lot of money to throw at this
to get the best product they can get, the biggest corn, they're
still at God's mercy. It's God that sends the rain.
It's God that waters these plants for them. And if you look here
at verse 37 of John chapter 7, It says, in the last day, that
great day of the feast. Now when we read our scripture
reading there, this particular day is the eighth day. I want
to read something from Numbers. It was a commentary from John
Gill on this particular thing. Numbers 29, I have to get back
to it here. The eighth day. This is John
Gill. I didn't write it down because
I thought he put it really well. The eighth day. Though this day
was properly a distinct festival, this is what God, he told these
people, you're going to keep this festival. The festival,
tabernacles, Feast of Tabernacles, or the Feast of Booths, they
also call it. This is referring to when God
brought the children out of Egypt, they wandered around and they
lived in tabernacles or tents or booths. This day was properly a distinct
festival and esteemed the chief or high day in the feast. This
one day was the happiest day of all. Yet fewer sacrifices
are appointed for it than on the other seven days. On every
one of them, two rams and 14 lambs were offered. But on this
day, there were but half as many. And whereas seven bullocks were
the fewest that were offered on any of those days, on this
day was only one offered. At this feast, there was an extraordinary
ceremony. We don't record this. These refer
to the old riders. They give you the traditions
of the Jews. At this feast, there was an extraordinary ceremony
in which the rabbins and formists namely the drawing water out
of the pool of Siloam, and pouring it, mixed with wine, on the sacrifice
as it laid on the altar. This they are said to have done
with such expressions of joy that it became a common proverb
amongst the Jews, and it says, he that never saw the rejoicing
of the drawing of water never saw rejoicing in all his life.
This was a spectacle to see this. The priest would come, and they
would pour this water on the sacrament. They'd mix it with
wine, and then they'd pour it on the sacrament. It was a joyous
occasion, because this feast is around the time of harvest. After the harvest, they were
to come and celebrate. And then they would pray for
the rains for the next year. Their lives depended on this
rain. all their earthly, they would
take this rain to drink, the rain would water their crops,
they would eat their crops, they would also feed crops to their
animals, and that rain also watered their animals. Their whole lives
depended on this rain. And if there was no rain on this
earth, we would really feel that, just like they did back then.
It was very important for them to have this water. The Jews
pretend to ground this custom on the following passage in Isaiah,
Isaiah 12, 3. It says, with joy shall you draw
water out of the wells of salvation. To this ceremony, Jesus is supposed
to refer when, in the last day, the great day of the feast, he
stood and cried, saying, if any man thirsts, let him come to
me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the
scripture says, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water,
thereby calling off the people from their carnal mirth-infested
and pompous ceremonies to seek spiritual refreshment for their
minds. That's what this is about. Now
here in John chapter 7, the rivers of living waters. He says to him, if any man thirst,
let him come unto me and drink. If any man thirst, let him come
to me and drink. Now what he means by that is
in the next verse where it says, he that believeth on me. By coming
to Christ and drinking is meant he that believes on me. That's
what that means. To believe on Christ is to come
to him and drink. were to go to him. These people
at the time, at this day, they were there celebrating like God
told them to. And I'm sure they were looking
for the rejoicing of that pouring out of the water. Because it
meant the harvest was in. They were going to be able to
eat until the next year. And they were praying and rejoicing
over the pouring out of water. Because this was what was to
bring in the next year's rain. Their whole lives depended on
it. But the Lord says, he that thirsts, let him come unto me. Let him come to me and drink.
If you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you are coming to him
and drinking. What is your spiritual thirst?
Salvation by Christ? There's something you thirst
after. Many of God's children are brought to a point, we all
are, God's going to bring you down to your knees, and you're
going to submit to him and his purpose and will. Many, many
people think, just like those farmers that went out, they would
put up these wells and these irrigation systems, try their
hardest, by their works, to get their crops the best they can.
And that's like works religion. It still depends on God. Nothing
they did could save them. I promise you, these farmers
up here in Waverly, they've got the money to spend on the best
irrigation, and yet their corn was only four feet tall. No matter
what they did, they worked and worked. If God doesn't bless
it, it's not going to prosper. If you don't look to Him for
salvation, you're not going to find it anywhere else. Salvation
is something God's children thirst after. Something else we thirst after.
Pardon of sin. Pardon of our sins. The wages of sin is death. I
repeat this all the time. I know I do, but it's something
we need to hear. The wages of sin is death. Everyone
in here is a sinner. You have to realize this, that
because of you disobeying God, he says you're to die. Now free
of full pardon from our Lord Jesus Christ, he takes our punishment
to that cross. We're no longer going to be punished.
That's something we thirst after, His righteousness. We thirst
after the Lord's righteousness, justification by His righteousness. Here's something else we thirst
after, the knowledge of Him. We grow in the knowledge of Him,
and the Lord sends His Spirit and begins the work of regeneration
in our hearts. What the Spirit does is point
you to Him. He tells you about Christ. He guides you to our
Lord Jesus. He makes us fall in love with
our Lord Jesus Christ, and we willingly submit to him. Communion with him. In the Old
Testament, they had to go to the high priests. He would go
into the holiest of holies one time a year and commune with
God. Now, we have our Lord sitting at the right hand of God, make
an intersection for us with God. We commune with the Lord Jesus
Christ every time we pray. When you read your scriptures
and read what he's done, you sit and talk to him. You commune
with him. Do you thirst after that? I know
you do. Christ is coming to me. He did
not tell these people to go to Moses and the law. These people
were doing what the law said. keeping those sacrifices these
seven days. All these bulls that they sacrificed,
these rams and lambs, they kept it. He told them to stay in booths. They would go take these branches
off these trees, certain trees, palms, myrtles, different ones,
and they would bundle them together, and they would make like a shelter,
and that's what they would set up. That's the booth that they
were talking about. Kind of like Jonah. when he finally ended
up at Nineveh, told him that God was going to destroy the
place, he wanted to see him destroyed. So he goes over and makes himself
a little booth to keep the shine off of him. He's going to watch
it be destroyed. Coming to Christ and drinking
means to believe on Christ. He that believeth on me Those
that believe on him and come to him to drink out of his belly
shall flow rivers of living water. Now, it says here, as the scripture
hath said. I'm in verse 38 now. As the scripture
hath said. Now, this doesn't point to any
certain scripture. This is pointing to the whole
sum of scripture in the Bible. Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Job. Let me
read this to you from Job. Job, this is from Job 32. Job's friends came to comfort
him, and all they did was accuse him of doing something wrong
to deserve all that he had went through. Job gets up, and he
speaks after him. He doesn't make much more sense. He doesn't do right. And then
there was one there, Elihu. He was the youngest. He keeps
his mouth shut, and he lets the aged men speak. Well, when it's
finally his turn to speak, he speaks wisdom. And Job hears
this. And Job has a change of heart. And he finally gets filled with
the Holy Ghost, and he says this. This is Job 32, 18 through 19.
He says, for I am full of matter, The spirit within me constraining
me. Behold, my belly is as wine which
hath no vent. It's ready to burst like new
bottles. The Holy Spirit, he was filled with the Holy Spirit
and he couldn't keep his mouth shut any longer. He was about
to burst. When you come to the Lord thirsty,
he's gonna give you his Holy Spirit. And when you're about
to burst with the Holy Spirit, you're going to tell others about
what great things He's done for you. That's why He's talking
about bursting. It's going to be like a spring
inside your belly. It just bursts out, and the grace
of God through the Spirit is going to come out of your mouth,
and you're going to talk to others. John the Baptist had his disciples.
Andrew was one of them. And after he pointed to Christ
and said, behold, the Lamb of God, Andrew and some others followed
the Christ. And when he found out who Jesus
was, he said, Andrew ran home and told his brother, Simon Peter,
we have found the Christ. It's the first thing you're going
to do. You're not going to keep quiet, are you? Lord saves you
and puts his spirit in you You're going to burst if you don't tell
somebody. And you're going to tell the ones you love, aren't
you? Kids, brothers and sisters, parents. Look what I found. We found the Christ. We've all
been looking for it. Eve was looking for it. Knew
she was having a son. Now let's talk about this water. The spiritual meanings of the
flow, rivers, of living water. Water is typical. It's the grace of the Spirit
of God. That's what this water represents,
he thought. It's the grace of the Spirit of God that he gives
us. And it's water because it signifies
cleansing and purifying. Water causes the elect to grow
and bring forth fruit. We're like trees of righteousness
planted along the river that flows out of the rock. Christ,
we're deeply rooted. We can't be moved. We're rooted
in this ground. And Christ, the spirit, the water
that comes out of him, we're rooted by that. And we grow in
the knowledge and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this water
also, it quenches our thirst from the heat Now, this one thing. When we look at the law of God,
we realize we can't keep that law. No man can. And that burns
inside of us, don't it? It's a weight. It's a heavy burden.
The Spirit, the grace of the Spirit of God that we come to
drink, He gives us. It quenches that. It cools that
burning heat that's in us because we can't keep God's law. We're
failures. Not in him. Not in him. It also says that it's a living
water. Living. This water gives life
to dead sinners. It gives life to dead sinners. That's the spirit coming to you
and beginning the work of regeneration in your heart. Living waters. It's also a river
of living waters. There's an abundance of grace,
an abundance of grace in our Lord. He told Paul, my grace
is sufficient for thee. It's because you can't ever run
that grace dry. It's an ocean, and when you take
out of it, It's like you didn't take anything. It's still full.
You'll never drain it. Not all of God's children put
together, we can never end. Drain all of his grace that he
gives us. It's a river of flowing water. Rivers, the abundance of it and
regeneration and sanctification. And what else? It flows. It says
it flows out of our belly. It flows out of the belly from
within us, from within his heart. God gives you a new heart, doesn't
he? One that loves. That old man, he's desperately
wicked, evil thoughts continually. Doesn't sound like there's any
love in a person like that, does it? This new man, the spirit
that God puts in us, loves. And you know, the Lord Jesus
Christ tells us, if you wanna keep the law, it's fulfilled
in one word, love. That's how you keep the law,
love one another. Nothing, there's no law against
love. It's a good thing. It flows out of his belly from
his heart out of his mouth. In prayer to God, you pray to
God. You can't pray unless that Holy
Spirit was given to you. You don't know who he is. The
Spirit comes, teaches us about him, and then we go to him in
prayer. We also communicate with one
another, like I touched on earlier. You're going to tell those around
you about what great things God's done for you. Why? Because all
your life, you're going to hear plenty of people telling you
lies about what God's done for you. They tell you what you can
do for God, right? What can you do for God? What
does His children do for Him? They believe. That's the only
thing we can do for Him, is to believe and follow Him. If you
believe Him, you're following Him. But there's only one that
truly believed and followed Him, and that's our Lord Jesus Christ.
If we're in Him, that's how you fulfill all these commandments
of our Lord. Now this living water, It comes out of our hearts in
prayer and conversation with others. We tell others of the
experience of the grace of God that we've experienced in our
hearts. It's for their comfort and to the glory of our God.
We praise him. We glorify Christ. We don't brag
in ourselves about what we've got. He gave it to us. We want
to share that with those who we love. Don't we? Pray for them. Now here in verse 39, he says,
but this is the Apostle John. He decides to intercede here
and tell us what this means. I love it that he tells us. He
says, this he spake 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. The Lord Jesus
Christ was glorified like this. When he died on the cross, he
was in that grave. He came up out of that grave
and sat down at the right hand of God and on his throne in heaven. That's his glorification. That
hadn't happened yet. And he tells his disciples it's
necessary that he would leave and go away, if not, the Comforter
wouldn't come. Remember that verse, that scripture?
The Comforter is the Holy Spirit. After Christ dies, he sends his
Holy Spirit to dwell in us. That's this river of living water.
That's this living water that bursts out of us. That's the
blessing in salvation. The blessing for us is that we're
gonna have a river of living waters that flows out of us. And that's not to our praise.
It's not to our praise. It's all his work, it's all his
doing, and he gets all the praise in that. Not many, not many. Many of us, like I said, these
farmers, they're trying their best to water their plants. And
you look around this year, it wasn't a very good year for corn.
Do they not realize that it's the Lord who sends that rain?
How many times has rain ruined your plans? Get a little upset. I think I went to a wedding one
time and it rained. Do you remember that? I forget
who that was. Feels like I went to a little wedding one time
and it got rained on. I've had a lot of rain ruin plans.
You get upset. How can you not remember who
sends that rain? God sends that rain, but it's
just rain. The water that we need is the
Spirit of God, His Holy Spirit that comes and comforts our hearts,
that teaches us about our Lord, that sets us apart, sanctifies
us, justifies us, pardons us of our sins. That's the knowledge
of Christ that we need to learn about, and that's what the Holy
Spirit does. I hope this was a blessing for
you. The blessing is receiving the Spirit and being full of
the Spirit of Christ, and it gushing out of us. All right. David, would you lead us in prayer?