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A.W. Tozer said, Oh God, I have tasted thy goodness and it both satisfies me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. Oh God, the triune God, I want to know thee. I long to be filled with longing. I thirst to be made thirsty still. This is the thirst that Jesus means when he says, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. We're going to look at the occasion for his words, the meaning of his words, the promise, and our response. First the occasion. At the beginning of John chapter 7 it says, after this, Jesus went about in Galilee, he would not go about in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the Jews, feast of the booths, was at hand. The feast of the booths, or tabernacles, was a week-long celebration at harvest time in Israel. You can see in Leviticus 23 where it is instituted. I'll read that from 23 starting in verse 33. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, speak to the people of Israel, saying, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, and for seven days, is the feast of the booths to the Lord. On the first day there shall be a holy convocation, you shall not do any ordinary work. For seven days you shall present food offerings to the Lord. On the eighth day you shall hold a holy convocation and present a food offering to the Lord. It is a solemn assembly. You shall not do any ordinary work. Now God commanded Israel to observe several times and feasts. It's sort of the way they marked the time. There was the Sabbath. There was Passover, which most of us are familiar with. That comes around Easter time, either in March or April. There was the Feast of the First Fruits, the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and finally, the Feast of Booths, or Tabernacles. And it was at this feast that Jesus made his declaration or his invitation, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Before he did this, his brothers, who John points out didn't believe in him, he says, leave here and go to Judea that your disciples may see your works also. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world for not even his brothers believed in him. They were encouraging him to make a spectacle of himself, to go and do miracles in front of everybody so that everybody would see him. And yet they didn't believe. I want to point out that John is recording what at the direction of the Holy Spirit he thinks is important. So it means that events do not necessarily happen one immediately after the other. For instance, John chapter 6 says at the beginning was the time of the Passover, and then we have the feeding of the 5,000 and Jesus walking on the water and the response to that. And the Passover takes place, as we've said, in March or April. The Feast of the Booths takes place in September or October. So it's been several months between chapter 6 and chapter 7. In chapter 5 and verse 18 it says, the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. So you see that for several months, at least, maybe even a little longer, the Jews, and in John's Gospel, Jews refers to the authorities, the religious authorities, the Pharisees, the scribes, the chief priests. The Jews have been seeking to kill Jesus the whole time. So from John chapter 5 to John chapter 6, several months pass to John chapter 7, and they're still seeking to kill him. It goes on to say after a little while, Jesus went up to the feast, but he went up quietly because he didn't want to be noticed immediately. Every Jew was supposed to take part in the Feast of the Booths, so he didn't want to go with his brothers and be announced, so he went quietly. About the middle of the feast, in verse 14, it says, he went into the temple and began teaching. The Jews therefore marveled, saying, how is it this man has learning when he never studied? He hadn't gone to their seminaries. He hadn't gone to their synagogues and been taught by other rabbis. I have a friend who applied to be the Women's and Children's Director at a church in Virginia. She was on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ for several years. She was in Turkey as a missionary for several years. She and her husband have adopted six special needs children from all over the world, in addition to the three that they had the usual way. And so when she applied for this position, they told her she didn't have the proper education. Even though she had 20 years of ministry behind her, and so she asked them, where in the Bible did Jesus go to seminary? That wasn't well received. But you see the point, the people that have the power want you to go through their method, and Jesus hadn't done that. And so they wondered, how is it that he knows these things when he's never studied? Jesus said, my teaching is not my own, but it's his who sent me. If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. Now, in Jerusalem, you have to understand that the people knew that they were seeking Jesus to arrest him. They knew, they had heard that he was considered dangerous and they wanted to have him killed. And yet now here he is in the temple speaking openly. And so some of the people said, is this not the man whom they seek to kill? And here he is speaking openly, and they say nothing to him. And then they say, can it be that they know that the authorities really know that this is the Christ? The words and the actions of the authorities don't seem to match. So people are suspicious. They're suspicious of the Pharisees and the chief priests. He's here. Why don't they seize him? They wonder. Why are they allowing this man to teach openly? Maybe they know something and they're not telling us. Could Jesus be the Christ? I guess it's not unlike today when the words and the actions of our own elected leaders don't seem to match or their words don't match reality. I won't cite examples. I'm sure you can think of your own. But as a result of the teaching, they're seeking to arrest him, but no one laid a hand on him for his hour had not yet come. And remember, when it says his hour had not yet come or his time had not yet come, they're referring to the hour of Jesus' death. They're referring to the hour of his crucifixion. Now it's getting serious and the Pharisees can see the influence of Jesus because it says many of the people believed in him. They said when the Christ appears, will he do more signs than this man? So they send officers to arrest him. Now all of this is to show the setting or occasion of these words of Jesus. Now we'll consider the meaning of the words. On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. What do we need to come to Jesus? What do you need to come to Jesus? Well, it doesn't say if anyone has done good deeds, let him come to me. If you have perfect church attendance, let him come to me. If you've given the church a lot of money, you can come to me. I want you to understand good deeds, church attendance, and giving your money aren't bad things. They're good things. But they're not the things that Jesus says, if anyone has, let him come to me. The answer is thirst, thirst for Jesus. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Tim Chalice writes, every soul thirst it may not be felt every moment, but to some degree every soul thirst after something it does not have. We are rarely content in our current condition, and it seems that this is the way we have been divinely wired. And throughout the Bible, God talks about spiritual thirst. I've already mentioned Matthew chapter 5, the Sermon on the Mount. But there are other scriptures. Psalm 63, which we sang, O God, you are my God. Earnestly I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you. Psalm 42 begins, as a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God, my soul thirsts for the living God. Isaiah 55, come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and he who has no money, come buy and eat, come buy wine and milk, and without money and without price. He's referring to the sustenance that's offered by God through our Savior Jesus Christ. He's referring to the thirst that can only be quenched in your soul by coming to Christ. John Piper wrote this. We know that Jesus is not talking about physical thirst, that's clear, but what he is saying is that the soul has something like physical thirst. When you go out without water, your body gets thirsty, and the soul, when it goes without God, gets thirsty. Your body was made to live on water, your soul is made to live on God. This is the most important thing to know about yourself. You were made to live on God. You have a soul, a spirit. There is a you that is more than your body, and that you, if it does not drink from the greatness and wisdom and power and goodness and justice and holiness and love of God, will die of thirst. Now implied in the word thirst is that Jesus offers what Jesus offers is all satisfying. The aim of all theology, of all study, of all biblical learning, of all preaching is to spread the satisfying banquet for you to eat with joy and protect the kitchen from your poison, from poison. The aim of cooking is eating, the aim of digging wells and clearing springs is drinking. Everything Jesus came to do and teach is aimed at providing the soul with food and drink that lasts forever. Jesus goes on to say, whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Now this he said about the spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the spirit had not been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. The meaning of these words is that our soul thirsts for God. To satisfy that thirst we only need to be thirsty and come to Jesus, and if we do, out of our heart will flow the spirit of Christ, which is what he means by the living waters. What does this look like? I know this might embarrass her, but I'm going to talk about my wife. She just ducked. We've been married 41 years. During that time there have been many deep joys and many sorrows. But I have seen her grow in Christ from that 20 year old girl to the woman she is now, and I can tell you the spirit of Christ flows out of her. I'll give you an example. She told me a story she didn't intend for me to repeat it, but I'm going to. She works at Starbucks. They usually or they often put her in the window because people like her. She's friendly and she likes people. They've asked her before, how do you do that? And why can't other people who work here do that? Well, the answer is she actually likes them. She actually likes the other people. She likes the customers. You can't fake it. So the other day a lady came through and Tracy said she looked stressed. This is through the window. She said she looked stressed. So she asked her how she was doing. And she started the lady started sobbing. She's not from Canada. We don't know where she's from, but she's not from Canada. And her family is far away and she misses them. And she said Tracy said she just had her hands in her face and she sobbed. So Tracy reached her hand out through the window. And the lady reached her hand out and they held hands for a while and she encouraged her and she told her, you're stronger than you think. She said thank you and drove away. A couple of days later the same lady came through and she invited Tracy to come to her house so she could make her breakfast. Now that's just one story. She's got many of them that are like that. But you see, if you care about people, if you reach out to people, if you're a Christian, if you've thirsted for Jesus and Jesus is in you by His Spirit and you reach out to people, His Spirit will flow out of you for them. And you have to ask yourself if that never happens to me, do I know Him? Do I know Him? I believe it's the Spirit of Christ in her that the lady found so attractive. Now it can work the other way. And it has for her and me as well. When sometimes when people recognize the Spirit of Christ, they react negatively. And Jesus said, if they hated me, they will hate you too. The promise is for the Holy Spirit, which Paul said is the down payment of our inheritance in Christ. The Spirit of Christ flows out of us to others if we are thirsting for Him. If we're thirsting for Him, He satisfies our thirst with rivers of living water, the Holy Spirit, which then flows out of us to other people. So what's our response? It's not always as it should be. Sometimes some of us, or all of us sometimes, try to satisfy our soul thirst, which things that can't satisfy. Jeremiah says as much in chapter 2, beginning in verse 11, he says, has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods, but my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens, at this. Be shocked. Be utterly desolate. Declares the Lord. For my people have committed two evils. They forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and dug out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns. They can hold no water. See the people of Israel were trying to satisfy their thirst apart from God. And we do the same thing. What is it that you believe will satisfy you? There's so much on offer in the Western world. So much that we think that it will satisfy us. So we're like the Israelites that Jeremiah spoke of. We dig our own wells, seeking satisfaction apart from God. It's like the Apostle John wrote in his first letter, do not love the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not from the Father, but it's from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. Quoting Chalice again, and so it is that the empty soul seeks to be satisfied. It seeks satisfaction in work, or family, or love, or sex, or money, and everything else the world has to offer. It might even seek satisfaction in religion, even the Christian religion, but yet never truly seeks God and thus never finds him. Until the Holy Spirit enables that soul to understand that the source of his thirst is Jesus and that enables him to see the one who can satisfy, he will continue to look in vain. Just because a man longs for something that can be found in God alone, doesn't mean he's looking for God. Many who claim they are questing for God are not thirsting for God as he's revealed himself in scripture, but only for God as they want him to be, or a God who will give them what they want. It's sort of like the idea that God is your vending machine. If I put in the right amount of prayer, the right amount of worship, the right amount of whatever it is, then God will give me what I really want. So it's not really God that we want, we want what he can give us. And God will not be a means to an end. Jesus said if you want me, you have to be thirsty for me. That's what Paul meant when he said in Philippians chapter 3, whatever I gain, I count as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord for his sake. I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ. The righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share in his sufferings becoming like him at his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection of the dead. So what are some things you can do to be thirsty and to begin to satisfy your thirst in Jesus? Hebrews chapter 5 at the end says about this we have much to say but it's hard to explain since you've become dull of hearing and I'm afraid for the western church for much of it. I'm not accusing anybody here but for a lot of Christians in Canada, in the United States and other parts of the west, we have become dull of hearing because we have so many other things that we think are going to satisfy our thirst. He goes on to say by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk not solid food. He's saying you're like a baby, you should have grown by now, you should have been advanced by now, you should have been flowing out the Holy Spirit to other people by now. But you're not. Someone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he's a child. But solid food is for the mature and for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. So what do you do? What do you do for your thirst for Christ to be filled? First admit your sin. Admit your sin and you're not progressing. Stop trying to fill your soul with that which doesn't us ultimately satisfy. You can dull your spiritual senses with all sorts of things, with television. For example, I have a friend who says his in-laws, if you go to their house, their TV is on from the time they get up to the time they go to bed and it's always on MSNBC. Talk about poison. Their parts and they don't even know it. TV, internet, smart phone scrolling. I remember we used to have dumb phones and smart people and now we go, well never mind. This is an example from a long time ago. I was still an on Christian in my early 20s and this will date me for sure. I had a cassette player radio. Oh, it was wonderful. With speakers and I'd get in the car. It was an old 72 Chevy Impala. The car wasn't much but the stereo was fantastic and I would put in my cassette tape, Gary Wright, Dream Weaver. I didn't even like the song anymore but then I thought it was great and I would play that in other cassettes and listen to it wherever I went. So one morning I was going to see a girl in another town, not Tracy, I hadn't met her yet. The town was about 30 minutes away. I got in my car and reached down to turn on my stereo and it was gone. Somebody had taken it. It turns out it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I couldn't distract myself with the noise. I had to think about stuff. I think that was the beginning of my conversion journey because I had to think about who I was in my life and where I was going and how I got where I am now. See something that I thought was essential to my happiness was gone. I didn't come to Jesus immediately. It took a couple of years but I think that was the beginning. And that's the hard part. The hard part is eliminating things voluntarily. See I didn't voluntarily give up my stereo. God through a thief took it. I'll say that again. God through a thief took it. Is the thief, did the thief sin? Yes. Is the thief responsible? Did God do it? Yes. The hard part is eliminating things voluntarily. Whatever gain I had, Paul says, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Matthew 13 he says, the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field which a man found and covered up. In his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls who on finding one pearl of great value went and sold all that he had and bought it. What's the point of those two short analogies, metaphors, parables? The idea is that Christ is of such value knowing him, having your thirst satisfied in him is of such value you're willing to give up everything to have it. If you want to truly taste and see that the Lord is good, you have to have the thirst in your soul satisfied by Jesus. You have to stop digging your own wells. Don't feed your soul on that which doesn't satisfy. Another illustration I'm hoping will resonate with you. Almost every year, except for the pandemic here, we've gone to my sister's house for American Thanksgiving. She lives near Chicago. Every year we're not. My sister turns 75 today. She said I'm 75, I'm not doing it this year. So we're going to Nashville. But every year that we've gone to my sister's house, the dinner is to die for. My brother-in-law makes the turkey on a grill wrapped in bacon. Just makes me weak just thinking about it. All the side dishes are wonderful. But there's something else that happens there, and it took me a couple of thanksgivings to figure this out. The people that are coming, it's an all-day thing. It starts with football. So we celebrate Thanksgiving with football and food as the pilgrims intended. And then what I notice is that people, as they arrive, they would bring appetizers. They would bring appetizers. And they're good appetizers, and of course you start eating them. The problem with that is by the time we got to the main course, by the time we got to the great food, by the time we got to that which would really satisfy us, we'd filled ourselves up on lesser things. And we weren't as hungry, or I wasn't as hungry, and I still ate it, but it wasn't as satisfying as it would have been if I had not filled up with that. And we do the same thing with our souls. We fill our souls up on appetizers, which don't satisfy. So that when we get to the main course, when we get to having our souls satisfied on the clear, cool water of Christ, we're already filled with other stuff. Stop digging your own wells. We have to stop feeding ourselves on things that are unsatisfactory food and drink. Just a few more things. So what do you do? First, you read the Bible every day. Every day. Not just to know it, but to be satisfied with Jesus in it. There's a difference between reading the Bible to know things and reading the Bible to drink. Second is you pray. Ask God to open your heart. Ask God to give you a thirst. The third is witness to others about the salvation in Christ. Martin Luther said, we are beggars. This is true. Someone else expanded that to say we are beggars showing other beggars where to find bread. And I have to say, if you never have an occasion where you want to talk to somebody about Christ, where you want to tell them about salvation, where you want to tell them where to find the bread of Christ. Remember he said, I am the bread of life. If you don't ever have an occasion where you want to tell somebody else about the bread, then either you aren't being fed, you aren't drinking from the well of Christ, or you don't know him yet. Because that's what Christians do. They tell other people about Jesus. Fourth thing is that you worship regularly. On Sunday, you can have family worship times. They don't have to be that long. It can be read a couple of verses. Sing a couple of hymns. Pray together. 15 minutes. Be involved in a Bible study. We have several Bible studies. Be involved in one. Fellowship with other believers. I hope I don't embarrass them, but yesterday was the second anniversary of our son Joe's death. So it was a sad day. Hanza and Aaron showed up at our house with pie and snacks. Why pie, you might ask. Because we had this thing in our family one time, we had a Thanksgiving or a Christmas dinner during the pandemic. We all got a piece of pie and we started to eat. Sam and Tracy and me were about halfway through our pie. We looked over and Joe had his fork. He's looking around like this. He said, I'm out of pie. It was really funny to us at the time. So it kind of became a ... If you did see the picture on Facebook, it's Joe with a pie. We love pie. So Aaron and Hanza brought us pies. It was very sweet and kind. But you see, that's the kind of thing you do if Christ is flowing from inside you. It's all about Jesus. So if you hear people say things like, well, we worship the same God as other religions. No we don't. No we don't. We don't. These are things that Jesus has said. John 5.23, whoever does not honor the son, does not honor the father who sent him. 5.42 and 43, I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my father's name and you did not receive me. 6.45, everyone who has heard and learned from the father comes to me. John 8.19, you know neither me nor my father. If you knew me, you would know my father also. 8.42, if God were your father, you would love me. 8.58, before Abraham was, I am. John 14, if you've seen me, you've seen the father. I and the father are one. The reason your soul thirst for God is your soul thirst for Jesus is because Jesus is God. God in the flesh, won't you come to him? Let's pray.