PARABLES OF CHRIST
RIVERS OF LIVING WATER
DR. JIM DIXON
JOHN 7:37-39
APRIL 11, 1999
The Feast of Tabernacles was the third of the great trio of feasts in Israel. The Feast of Tabernacle was a 7-day feast. It was celebrated in the autumn of every year, celebrated in our month of October. All Jewish males in Israel were required to come to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles. Literally hundreds of thousands of visitors were in the city of Jerusalem during the great feast.
During the Feast of Tabernacles, there was a ritual. It was a water ritual. When the priest of Israel would take a golden pitcher outside the walls of the city of Jerusalem and down to the Pool of Siloam. The priest would fill this golden pitcher with the water from the Pool of Siloam. The crowds who surrounded the pool and lined the streets would shout the words from Isaiah 12:3, “Let us, with joy, draw water from the wells of salvation.” Then the priest of Israel would take the water up the road, as the crowds lined the sides of the road, and through the water gate and into the holy city. The Levitical choir would sing the Hallel. They would sing the words from Psalms 113 to 118. It was all accompanied by the playing of flutes, and the priests would take the water in that golden pitcher up onto the temple mount and pour the water onto the altar of the temple.
This water ritual took place each day of the 7 days of the Feast of Tabernacles. It was on the last day, in conjunction with this water ritual, that our Lord Jesus Christ stood up and proclaimed, “If anyone thirst, let him come unto Me and drink, for he who believes in Me, as the scriptures have said, ‘out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”
Now, the Apostle John tells us that Jesus was speaking of the Holy Spirit. Jesus gives to us the Holy Spirit as living water. To understand the meaning of this, we need to understand the metaphorical use of water in the Bible. In the Bible, the word water symbolized two things. First of all, in the Bible, water symbolizes life. It symbolizes life. We can understand this on the physical level. We need physical water for physical life.
Scientists examine the human body from a variety of perspectives. Some scientists, some biologists, some physicians view the human body systematically. They speak of the skeletal system with approximately 200 bones. They speak of the muscular system with approximately 600 muscles. They speak of the complexity of the nervous system. They speak of the circulatory system and the respiratory system. They view the body systematically.
Other scientists and biologists view the body molecularly. Those who view the body molecularly understand that the body consists primarily of water molecules. Your body is approximately 70% water. It consists mostly of water molecules. You need that water for life. In the course of your life, if you live an average life span, you will consume 16,000 gallons of water, all needed for life. Every day each of us needs 2-1/2 quarts of water to sustain life. If the water content of your body is depleted by 1%, you begin to experience thirst. If it’s depleted by 5%, you begin to develop a temperature. If it’s depleted by 8%, you begin to experience systematic failures. If it’s depleted by 10%, you can no longer walk. If it’s depleted by 12%, that’s when people begin to die. Water is needed for life.
A young person in perfect health, fully monitored under optimum conditions, can live as long as two months without food, but you can’t live longer than one week without water. Water is needed for life. Even the ancient world understood this. Physical water for physical life.
During the Feast of Tabernacles, the Jewish people in Israel remembered their 40 years of wandering in the Sinai desert. They commemorated how their ancestors had wandered for 40 years in the wilderness. During the Feast of Tabernacles, the Jewish families in Jerusalem built booths—little tabernacles, little dwellings—on the rooftops to remember the temporary dwellings that their ancestors had lived in as they wandered in the wilderness. The water ritual that we mentioned earlier which took place every day during the Feast of Tabernacles was conducted so the people of Israel would remember how God supernaturally provided physical water for physical life as they pilgrimaged in the desert.
The Book of Exodus, the 17th chapter, the 6th verse, tells us how God provided water supernaturally from the rock at Meribah. God caused water to flow from that rock, providing life, physical life, for the people in the midst of their desert experience.
In the book of 1 Corinthians, in the 10th chapter, in the 4th verse, the Apostle Paul tells us that that rock of Meribah that provided water for the people was Christ. But Paul was speaking spiritually and metaphorically. He was saying that Jesus Christ is the Rock upon which the church is built. As that rock, the rock of Meribah, provided physical water for physical life, so Christ provides spiritual water to His people for spiritual life. He provides spiritual water for spiritual life. Jesus Christ offers living water. He offers the water of life, and this world desperately needs the water of life.
Apart from Christ, everyone in this world is spiritually dead. That’s what the Bible tells us. To understand this, we go back to Genesis, chapter two, verse 7, where the Bible tells us that God breathed on man. God breathed on men and women. “He breathed on them,” the Bible tells us, “the breath of life.” Most Bible scholars and most theologians understand that through this God imparted not simply physical life. But as God breathed on man the breath of life, God imparted spiritual life. He gave not only the human spirit, but, in some sense, the divine spirit. We were created in the imago Dei. We were created in the image of God, recipients of spiritual life.
But then you come to Genesis, chapter three, and something tragic happens. We see what theologians call the fall of man. Sin enters the world, and mankind loses spiritual life. The imago Dei is shattered. Even our physical life is diminished. And so, Christ is sent into the world, as recorded in the New Testament, and Christ offers to regenerate mankind. He offers to regenerate the women and men of the world. He offers what the Bible calls “new life.” He offers new birth, birth from above. He offers birth in the Spirit. He offers to make us born of the Spirit.
The Bible tells us that when we come to Christ and when we receive Him as Lord and Savior, in that moment Christ sends living water within us. He sends the person of the Holy Spirit within us to regenerate us that we might be born of the Spirit and become children of God. We receive, in that moment, when we embrace Christ as Lord and Savior, spiritual life. That’s why, in John, chapter 20, the resurrected Christ appears to the disciples in the Upper Room and the Bible tells us, “He breathed on them the breath of God.” He breathed on them saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” and they received Living Water and they were regenerated. Through the indwelling presence of the person of the Holy Spirit, they received spiritual life, and they became children of God.
Then you come to Pentecost, when by the command of Christ the Holy Spirit descends upon the assembly, the church. The Holy Spirit comes upon the whole company of believers, and they are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. They receive the Living Water, and their parched souls, their dry spirits, come to life. They receive eternal life—spiritual life, which is eternal—by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.
The Bible tells us today that whenever anyone in this world asks Jesus Christ to be his or her Lord and Savior, in that moment Christ gives them the Living Water. In that moment, He gives them life. In that moment, He sends His Holy Spirit to dwell in their spirit, and they are regenerated, born anew, and become a son or daughter of God. They have life.
Last night, Bill McCartney stood here behind this very pulpit and he said that when he was 33 years old and coaching at the University of Michigan a small group of Christians met with him. Through their testimony, he accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. In that moment, he was regenerated. He was reborn. The Spirit of God came within him, and he found life. If you’re a Christian today, at some point you had an experience like that.
The word “water” in the Bible not only has the symbolic meaning of life, but the word water in the Bible also carries the symbolic meaning of cleansing, the meaning of washing. When you come to the table today and you partake of the bread and the cup, you come thanking God, thanking Christ for the life that He has given you and for the fact that you have been regenerated and reborn. You come thanking Him for His Holy Spirit who is within you. If you feel as you come to the table that you don’t have as much life, that the presence and person of the Holy Spirit within you is not as powerful as that presence and experience should be, then it is appropriate for you, as you come to the table, to ask for Jesus, who gives the living water, to release more of the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in your life. But, if you would do this, you must also confess every known sin and you must seek His cleansing. You must seek His cleansing. Water, in the biblical world, represented cleansing. Jesus offers the cleansing water.
You know, it was many years ago that they began to install automated hand dryers in public restrooms. Today you often see them. I remember the first time I saw an automated hand dryer was in a public restroom at Stapleton International Airport. I saw this thing on the wall. My hands were wet. I went up to it. I read the instructions. It said, No. 1, push button. No. 2, place hands under nozzle. No. 3, rub hands briskly together. No. 4, machine shuts off automatically. Somebody has scribbled in No. 5, and they had written, “Wipe hands on pants.”
It’s been my experience that that’s kind of how those automated hand dryer’s work. Not very well. Some things in life are like that, aren’t they? They just don’t work very well. They don’t work. If you’re trying to find cleansing from sin, if you’re trying to find inner or inward cleansing apart from Christ, God wants you to know today it’s just not going to work. It isn’t going to work.
Millions of Hindus every year make a pilgrimage to Varanasi, a city in India. They ritualistically bathe in the Ganges River. They are seeking cleansing. They’re seeking to have their sins washed away. But the polluted waters of the Ganges River cannot take away sin. Every year, millions of Muslims pilgrimage to Mecca, and they circle the Kaaba, and they kiss the black stone which allegedly fell from heaven. They do this in part because they are seeking cleansing, washing of sin. But, you see, even if they pilgrimage to Mecca, even if they fast in the month of Ramadan, even if they perform ritualistic prayer and alms giving, none of these things can cleanse or take away sin. Only Jesus Christ died for your sin. Only Jesus died for you. He lived a perfect life, and He died an atoning death. He died for you. He paid the penalty for your sin and for my sin. He died in substitutionary atonement.
Of course, by His body broken and His blood shed, we can find forgiveness. If you’re a Christian, then you had a moment when you came to the cross and you acknowledged your sin and you received Christ as Savior and Lord. But we should understand that the work of the cross, the Bible tells us, is only appropriated by the work of the Spirit. The work of the cross is only appropriated by the work of the Spirit. It’s the Holy Spirit.
Jesus tells us in John 16 that it’s the Holy Spirit who convicts us of sin. It’s the Holy Spirit who draws us to the Savior. It’s the Holy Spirit who brings us to the foot of the cross. Then when we receive Christ, it’s the Holy Spirit who comes and indwells us and regenerates us, as we have seen. And then it’s the Holy Spirit who baptizes us. The Bible speaks of “baptizo en pneumati,” baptism in the Spirit.
You see, water baptism cannot take away your sin. We receive water baptism in obedience to the scriptures as a public testimony of our faith, but water baptism in and of itself cannot take away your sin. It’s simply an outward sign. Only the inward reality takes away sin. The inward reality is “baptizo en pneumati,” the baptism of the Holy Spirit. When we receive Christ as Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit does indeed baptize us, washes us inwardly, and begins that work of sanctification.
John the Baptist, in Matthew’s Gospel, the third chapter, said, “I baptize with water. After me comes One who baptizes with the Holy Spirit—the One who gives living water, the One who gives the Spirit, Jesus Christ.” In 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, the Apostle Paul writes, “By one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body. All were made to drink of the one Spirit.” What a tragedy that in Pentecostal theology (and in some Pentecostal churches) the Holy Spirit and the baptism of the Holy Spirit are used to divide the body of Christ when the Bible tells us that it’s the Holy Spirit and the baptism of the Holy Spirit that is meant to unite us. Paul says, “By one Spirit, we have all been baptized into one body. All have been made to drink of the one Spirit.” 1 Corinthians, chapter 12.
If you believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, you have received a baptism of the Holy Spirit. He’s come to indwell you and He’s come to cleanse you. Paul wrote to Titus in Titus chapter 3 and said, “He saved us, not by our works of righteousness but in virtue of His own mercy, through the washing of regeneration in the renewal of the Holy Spirit which He has poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.” Jesus Christ pours out the Holy Spirit upon us and gives us the washing of regeneration.
Last night, Mark Schlereth of the Denver Broncos, starting offensive lineman, stood up here. He said, “I do not stand here because I am without sin. I stand here because my sin is forgiven.” If you’re a Christian, you understand that. You’re not without sin, but your sin is forgiven by the blood of Christ and through the washing of regeneration.
Well, almost a month ago (and with this we’ll close our message) it was on a Tuesday night, March 16. I was sitting in my study reading a book. Barb called to me from the living room. She said, “Jim, you’ve got to see this.” I went into the living room and Barb was watching Larry King. Larry King’s theme for the night was “Morality in America in the Wake of the Clinton Debacle.” He had five guests on his show. The first guest was Franklin Graham, representing Christianity, Franking Graham being the son of Billy Graham and the heir apparent to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Franklin Graham will be here in Denver this week in conjunction with the ministry of the Samaritan’s Purse.
Then Larry King had four others on this panel of so-called religious experts. He had a Buddhist leader. He had two New Age leaders, a man and a woman. The man was Chopra, who has been on the cover of Time Magazine and apparently has a following that numbers in the millions. Then he had a liberal Jewish leader. Franklin Graham asserted and stated that, at the end of this life, there are two destinies. There is heaven and there is hell, and that God offers salvation, eternal life, and heaven itself through faith in Jesus Christ. The other members of the panel… and you know, there’s not much difference between a Buddhist and a New Ager. You could throw a small blanket over the group of them. The other members of the panel said, “No, there is no hell. There’s only heaven, and ultimately we’re all going to go to heaven.” In fact, one member of that panel said that if we can just think enough positive thoughts, we can bring heaven to earth!
Franklin Graham said that there’s a reality called sin. He said that we need to deal with sin honestly. He said that Christ died for sin. The other members of the panel said, “Well, you know, there’s really no such thing as sin. We really shouldn’t think of sin. There are good decisions and bad decisions. We’re all on a journey of growth. Sometimes the bad decisions are even more helpful than the good decisions because we can grow more through them. But there’s really no such thing as sin. That’s kind of a negative way of thinking. You shouldn’t think of sin.” Apparently, Adolph Hitler just made a lot of bad decisions.
It occurred to me as Barb and I were watching the show how the people of our country (and indeed, the people of the world) are creating their own gospel. People are creating their own gospel, and they’re believing what they want to believe. What do people want to believe? They want to believe that everyone is going to heaven. They want to believe there is no such thing as sin. They want to have religion without rules. They want to have God without the demand of godliness. That’s what people want. But if you’re a Christian, if you really believe in Jesus, then you’ve acknowledged you’re a sinner, and you’ve felt the tug of the Holy Spirit convicting you of sin, and you’ve come to the foot of the cross. You’ve asked Jesus to be your Lord and your Savior, and He has sent the Living Water within you. He has sent the Holy Spirit within you, and you have been regenerated and reborn, and you have become a daughter of God or a son of God. You’ve received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the washing of regeneration. As you come to the table this morning, you give Him praise.
If you remain in spiritual death, you don’t want to take of the bread or the cup until you are right with Christ and you come into spiritual life. This morning, you can receive life. You can receive cleansing. You can come to the Water. You can receive the Living Water of the Holy Spirit if you receive Jesus as Lord and Savior. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.