John 7:37-52 “Four Responses to an Invitation”

1:08So, background number one. In the first four chapters of John, there is very little opposition to our Lord. In chapter 5, Jesus is opposed by the religious leaders in Jerusalem as a result of the Healing of the paralytic on the Sabbath. In chapter 6, John records a large-scale departure of the would-be disciples after our Lord's teaching on the bread of life, eating flesh, drinking blood, and his ascension. In chapter 7, the chapter that we're in, the opposition to our Lord becomes broader and more intense. And you should note that from this point on in John's Gospel and in Jesus' public ministry, John records an increasingly deepening hostility towards Jesus.

2:20Chapter 7 clearly is the turning point in John's Gospel. Background number two. There are three festivals that every Jewish male was required to attend. The first is the Passover. The Passover took place at the beginning of the grain harvest in the spring, usually March, April. The second festival was Pentecost. This occurred seven weeks later at the end of the grain harvest. Harvest, roughly May or June. The third festival was tabernacles. The tabernacles took place during the autumn harvest of olives and grapes in September and/or October, depending on how the calendar worked. Now, tabernacles was also called booths or in-gathering, because the Hebrew people would build booths to live in for the seven days of the feast.

3:35These booths were a reminder of their temporary shelters when the Jewish nation had been in the wilderness wandering. In effect, during the Feast of Tabernacles, even within the city of Jerusalem, the entire city of Jerusalem moved outside for a camp out. So, there are two things I want you to know about tabernacles. Number one, the Messiah, and number two, water. The association of tabernacles with these two items is critical to our understanding of our text. So, number one, the association with the Messiah was covered last week by Pastor Chris in his sermon. He specifically laid out how Zechariah 14, specifically verses 16 through 21. Taught the Hebrews of the hope of the Messiah and how that Messiah was celebrated during tabernacles.

4:41So, number two, tabernacles is associated with water. And children, I want you to pay attention for a second because this is really fun for you all. Each day during the seven-day feast of the tabernacles, a priest would go to the spring of shalom, fill a golden pitcher of water, chant Isaiah 12:3, specifically that says, With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And then the priest would carry that water up through, up the hill to the water gate.

5:20Now, the priests would be followed by crowds. The crowds would have tree branches in their right hand, symbolizing those temporary shelters, and they would have citrus branches in their left hand, celebrating the harvest. And they would shake the branches, sing Psalms 113 through 118. And I want you to think this: children, how much fun would you have waving branches, dancing around, and singing? And it was allowed. You could do it. When the procession of all of these people shaking branches and singing got to the temple, the priest, they would quiet down. The priest would climb to the altar steps and pour the water on the altar.

6:18The water ceremony symbolized two things: it was a plea to God for the autumn rain, and it was also a symbolic reminder to the Israelites that they got water from a rock in the wilderness and of Zechariah last week, and Ezekiel's prophecy of water coming out of the temple to form a river. So that was symbolic of what the priest is doing. Background number three: look at John 7. John 7, verses 1 through 13, takes place at the beginning of this seven-day Feast of Tabernacles. Verses 14 through 24 takes place somewhere in the middle of the week. In verse 37 through 52, our passage this morning, takes place on the last day of the seven-day Feast of Tabernacles.

7:18So it's important that everything we discuss this morning is tied to the tabernacles telling us of the Messiah and of the water symbolism. So, when Jesus makes a claim that he is the Messiah or that he is living water, it's not accidental. He's doing this purposefully for his audience. Okay, so with this background behind us, today I want to consider an invitation given by Jesus and four responses. An invitation and four responses. Just want to make sure you understand, I borrowed the framework for this sermon from John MacArthur, the outline, but most of the content comes elsewhere. But I do want to give him credit for the invitation and the four responses. Okay, first, let us consider the invitation. Look at verse 37.

8:20On 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. On the last day, in that quiet moment when the feast reaches its apex, after the priest takes the golden pitcher and pours the water on the altar for the last time during the feast, at the time when the most people would have been gathered at the temple, Jesus stands up. Just remember, rabbis didn't stand up. Stand up to teach. They sat down. But Jesus stands up at this quiet highlight so that more people can hear him. And he cries out: If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

9:18Before we look at the responses to this invitation, I want to look at three actions included in this invitation, and then we're going to take kind of a little rabbit hole down a theological path. Note the three actions in this invitation: thirst, come and drink. Thirst, come and drink. The first action, thirst, tells of a recognized need. Thirst is a conscious desire for something not in one's possession. So, what is Jesus talking about? He's talking about a thirst, a longing for deliverance, hope, peace, forgiveness for salvation. Before a person can be saved, he or she must sense their need for salvation. They must be aware that they are in sin. And that they are lost.

10:33And when this sense, this awareness comes, only then can the sinner turn to Jesus for salvation, which leads to the second action: come. Notice the general invitation. If anyone thirsts, the invitations of Jesus are always unlimited, universal, and open-ended. Those who thirst must come. Now, spiritually speaking, what does it mean to come? It means to move towards Jesus Christ as the only source of your need. It is to turn your back on the world, to abandon your sin, abandon your self-confidence, and cast your feet, cast yourself at the feet of Jesus. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. The sinner must come to Jesus.

11:45The third action is to drink. To drink means to appropriate. All right, children, I got something for you. We're going to borrow an analogy from Alan Carr. If I am thirsty, I can satisfy my thirst with this water, right? Yet, water will only work for me if I do what? Drink it. I can fill this water bottle, but the water does me no good in the bottle. It's only if I take off the cap, place the bottle to my lips, tilt it, and allow the water to get into my body that I can receive the benefits of this water. Jesus is the exact same way.

12:40He is available to save you, but only if you see the need, you come to him, and you appropriate that. That is, you place your faith in his work. I'm afraid, brothers and sisters, that many of you see the need for Jesus. You think about coming to Jesus, but you stop short of inviting him into your lives. It's no different than this looks cool, but you never appropriate what Jesus has done for you. Brothers and sisters, those of you in the audience, please do not be guilty of doing that. No one is ever saved unless Jesus is received into one's heart and life.

13:40Brothers and sisters, all three actions: thirst, come, and drink, are part of what it means to believe. Because that's exactly what Jesus says in verse 38. Whoever believes in me, what does it mean to believe in him? It means to thirst, to come, and to drink. All right, before we get to the four responses in this text to this invitation given by Jesus, I want to speak to those of you who are resident theologians. Look again at the latter part of verse 38. Out of his heart, we'll back up a little bit. As the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

14:31There's really considerable discussion as to what scripture our Lord is referring to and what is the precise meaning of his words. As to the scripture our Lord is referring to, we're really not sure. He could be referring to Isaiah 12, Ezekiel 36, Ezekiel 47. But what we do know, not being sure what to say, Scripture passage Jesus is referring to, we do know how John has constructed his gospel. John has been trying to say from the very first chapter in his gospel that pictures and symbols come from Moses. That all that went before Jesus was only type, shadow, and preparation. But the coming of Jesus Christ, the fullness, has arrived. So allow me to give you a picture or illustration. Picture a man who's needing to look over a wall. Okay?

15:37If the man jumps, he can just get a glimpse of what is over the wall. But yet, if that person could walk to the other side of the wall, oh, cool, I can see everything. Jesus's incarnation, according to John, allows us to get around and see the other side. That the Old Testament saints had been doing this for years. Because Jesus is in essence saying right now at the tabernacles, do you realize that this feast of the tabernacles rituals that you've been doing for centuries is about me? That water being poured on the altar and the water. Flowing out of the temple. That's me.

16:34While we are not sure about the passage, we are also not sure of what Jesus says. Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Who is the his? Is the his Jesus or is it the believer? I'm going to really take a middle ground between two hotly contested views of this interpretation, but I'm going to give you a simple analogy: the water that flows to you when you come to Christ comes into your life, but it doesn't stay in you. You are not a bucket, a reservoir. The water goes through you. You become a fountain that becomes a river. The question then becomes: where did that water come from? Verse 39 explains. Now, this Jesus said about the Spirit. The river of living water from us comes from the Holy Spirit. Every believer possesses the Holy Spirit. Our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. God, the Spirit, takes up resident in us. And the Spirit provides the water that flows through us. Yeah. At this time, as Jesus is speaking, the Spirit had not come in his fullness. The Spirit was kind of with them in the sense that Jesus was here because God is present, but it had not come in fullness. And so, verse 39 prophesies this: When will this Spirit come in fullness? When will the Spirit begin flowing from us? Verse 39. 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 was not yet glorified. The Holy Spirit couldn't come until Jesus had ascended into heaven.

18:46And that was what we were waiting on. And it was not until Pentecost when he sent the Holy Spirit, launched the church, that the river on the inside begins to flow to the world. Thus, resident theologians, Jesus is saying in verses 38 and 39: For those of you who come to me and drink, you will not only be satisfied, but you will become a river of life to the rest of the world. That was the invitation with a little rabbit trail for the resident theologians. Now, let me consider the four responses.

19:30To Christ's invitation. Spoiler alert, these four responses at the time Christ spoke this are really very similar to the four responses that we see today to when the gospel of Jesus Christ is shared. The first response is found starting in verse 40. When they heard these words, some of the people said, This really is the prophet. Others said, This is the Christ. The first response is the response of the convinced. The convinced receive the truth. This is the prophet. This is the Christ. As a side note, in the first century, many Jews thought of the promised prophet and of the Messiah as two different people. We on this side of the gospel see it as one, but they saw it as two different people. They definitely said that when Jesus fed the crowds, some thought he was the prophet Moses, predicted in Deuteronomy 18, doubtless owing to the fact that the closest Old Testament equivalent to the miracle of him feeding the 5,000 was the provision of manna. So some said, he is the prophet.

21:00Others said, no, no, no, he's not a prophet. He's the Christ. He's the Messiah. We read about Andrew coming to Simon and saying, we have found the Messiah. Nathaniel says, Jesus is the King of Israel. The disciples say, Jesus is the Holy One of God. All of that occurs in John's Gospel prior to this chapter. There is a second group that responds to this invitation. That second group is the contrary. The convinced receive the truth. The contrary reject the truth. Verse 41, last half of 41. But some said, is the Christ to come from Galilee?

21:54The actual Greek construction of the question expects a negative answer. Actually, if you interpret it with the force, it would say, Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Are you kidding? So who are the contrary? They are the skeptics. They are the cynics. They are the ones who repeatedly, constantly mocked Jesus. Pharisees, scribes, rabbis, religious leaders, and the people who abandon him. The very problem of the contrary. At a bare minimum, is that they think Jesus, they think Jesus comes from Galilee.

22:39And they are convinced that the Messiah cannot come from Galilee. Look at verse 42. Has not the scripture, Micah 5:2, said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was. There is a third group, the confused. The convinced receive the truth. The contrary reject the truth. The confused wrestle with the truth. Verse 43. So there was a division among the people over him. Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees and said to him, Why did you not bring him? The officers answered, No one ever spoke like this man. The Pharisees said, Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? Only this crowd, but this crowd that does not know the law, they're accursed.

23:50The officers of the temple, what you need to think of this is the temple police are confused. Back in 7, back in verse 32, just a little bit before this, the Pharisees and the chief priests sent officers to get Jesus and arrest him. When these officers come back to the chief priests and Pharisees, they don't have Jesus. The chief priests and Pharisees will call them the contrary, said to them, Why did you not bring him? Now remember, the officers were drawn themselves from the Levites. They were religiously trained. They were the police of the temple. Yet these temple officers feel torn apart at the deepest level of their being by the same deeds and words of Jesus that were tearing apart the population at large. And the officers answered, No one ever spoke like this man.

25:03The contrary, the Pharisees, they're infuriated. You need to envision, they're mad. How can you be so gullible? Have you also been deceived? Do you see even one of us, your religious leaders, the most knowledgeable experts on the Old Testament, believing in this Jesus? Absolutely not. It is only the stupidity. Commoners who do not know the scriptures as we do, who follow him. How can you be so gullible? That's the anger that they're speaking to. The convinced receive the truth. The contrary reject the truth. The confused wrestle with the truth. The fourth group, the cautious, research the truth. Verse 50. Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does? They replied, Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.

26:24We meet an old friend here. Nicodemus was a member of this Sanhedrin, but he had spent some time with Jesus. Remember in John 3, Nicodemus came to Jesus by night and talked about the new birth and how to enter the kingdom of heaven. We haven't heard anything about Nicodemus since then. So, what's he been doing for the last year or two? He appears to have been. Cautiously in search of the truth. And so Nicodemus speaks up. Our law doesn't judge a man unless it first hears from him and knows what he is doing, does it?

27:17Nicodemus is in essence asking that justice be done to Jesus in accordance with the law, which was valid for everybody and allowed no one to be condemned unless heard without careful examination. And you could go back and look at Deuteronomy 1, 17, and 19, that would have substantiated what Nicodemus is arguing. Now, ironically, the Sanhedrin who just accused the multitudes, the commoners, of being stupid and not knowing the law, Nicodemus now shows them that they have a disregard themselves for the law.

28:04The response of the contrary to Nicodemus' statement is swift. Are you from Galilee too? You must have come from the same neighborhood Jesus was. You came from the same place. You're just a pro-guy. You're pro-Jesus. Search and see that no prophet has ever come out of Galilee. Galilee, that's a dump. The ironic thing is, they have the Sanhedrin, these leaders have ironic in the sense that they have a revisionist history. They forgot that both Jonah and Nahum came from Galilee.

28:50Why do I say that Nicodemus is cautious in searching for the truth here in John 7? It is because in John 19, six months from now, we read: if you look at John 19, verse 38, after these things, Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate granted, and Pilate granted permission, so he came and took away his body. Nicodemus, who had first come to him by night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pound weight. He, Nicodemus, took the body of Jesus, bound it in linen and wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. They laid him in a new tomb in the garden.

29:53Six months later, from this event today that we're discussing, at the end of the gospel, Jesus is most likely burying his Lord and Savior. Some people believe. Some people reject. Some people stay stuck in limbo. But some people are in process towards accepting the gospel of Jesus Christ. And Nicodemus in chapter 7 was cautiously seeking. So, in closing, what I'd like to do today is to comment on one additional thought that is embedded within John 7 and really is embedded within the first seven chapters of John. And as a reminder, this is a turning point, okay, in John's gospel.

30:45The story this morning occurring six months before his death, after John chapter 7, Jesus never goes back to that dump called Galilee. He stays in and around Judea. Yet, he stays under the radar because he knew his time had not yet come. He was sensitive to the Father's timetable. Listen to these verses: John 2:4, my hour has not yet come. John 7:6, my time is not yet come. Here. John 7:8, my time has not fully come. John 7:30, his hour had not yet come. John 8:20, his hour had not yet come.

31:47But by contrast, if you begin to look into the subsequent chapters, John 12, you hear this. The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 13:1, Jesus knowing that his hour had come, that he would depart out of this world to the Father. Finally, John 17:1, our Father, the hour has come. Brothers and sisters, from this passage, we learn something. We learn that Jesus was exceedingly sensitive to the Father's timetable. I would suggest, and I fear, that most of us have a different timetable from God's timetable. We have different ideas than God does about what we want to happen. He's later than we want him to be. He surprises us in various ways. He does things differently than we had in mind.

33:01If you truly accept God's timing, you will not seek to control God by binding Him to our needs, our desires, or our timing. Linking this to the practical application I gave when I preached on chapter six, false faith rejects the absolute sovereignty of God and rejects it particularly in regards to His timing. True faith embraces the sovereignty of God and we embrace His timing. Let us pray. Father, we come to you in adoration. We are astounded that from the beginning of time, you put forth a plan to save a people.

34:21And through centuries and centuries and centuries, those that Seated us had but a glimpse of who Jesus was, why he was coming, and what he would accomplish. We adore you because we have visibility to say, Jesus is living water. And if we embrace that living water, if we thirst for it, if we come to it, if we appropriate that living water, that living water can flow through us from the Spirit to others. Lord, there are some in this very room who are very comfortable coming to church.

35:26There are many that are comfortable in saying, Yeah, I kind of see the need to come to church because I'm a sinner. They even kind of said that, you know, Jesus is a really good solution to this problem. But I know that there are some in this room who have never said, I will place my faith in the very one who can save them. May any individual this morning who has not Yet, place their faith in Jesus Christ's completed work. Do so this very morning.

36:09And for the rest of us who have appropriated, who have drunk, who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ, may we be bold in sharing that truth. May we be bold in sharing that invitation. May we not be fearful when others respond differently. And may we also embrace the fact that we are but tools in your hands. And last, for those of us who have embraced this truth, may we quit fighting with you about your timing.

36:49The brothers and sisters prior to Jesus coming to this world waited and waited and waited for the Messiah. They cried, they appealed, but Jesus came at the right time and in the right way and with the right outcome. Can we not trust that, God, you will do the very same thing in our lives going forward? We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening to this. Audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.