X-alt: November 2011

Thirst satisfied by salvation

I didn’t have much of a voice yesterday, so I got everyone else to do the work and I did very little!  Hopefully this gives a flavour of what we were looking at!

We started by reading John 7:37-44 and exploring the passage a bit.  Jesus was at the Festival of Tabernacles (or Shelters) (see 7:2) in which the Jewish people remembered the time they spent in the wilderness for 40 years – a nomadic people who wandered around the desert living in tents (the tabernacles or shelters).  During that time God provided them with food and water.  We’re concentrating on water here, and we see an example of the miraculous way God provided this in Exodus 17.

Each day during the festival there was a joyous celebration of this provision where the priests brought water (symbolic of the water supplied from the rock) to the temple from the pool of Siloam in a golden pitcher. During the procession the people recited Is. 12:3 “You will receive your salvation with joy as you would draw water from a well.”

The water was poured out on the altar as an offering to God, while the people shouted and sang.  This sets the scene for Jesus’ claim in v.37 – “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. If anyone believes in me, rivers of living water will flow out from that person’s heart, as the Scripture says.”  Some people have even suggested that Jesus may have said this at the very moment the water was being poured onto the altar.

By saying this Jesus was claiming that he could save – i.e. that he was God – and that he was the fulfilment of all this ceremony signified (see also 1 Corinthians 10:4)!  This was controversial stuff!  How do we know Jesus wasn’t just been full of himself, or mistaken, or even silly?  We need to join with many others and experience this for ourselves!

Jesus’ invitation was to anyone who is thirsty.  When we come to know him we receive the Holy Spirit who becomes streams of living water flowing from within us.

One person who experienced this in the Bible was the Samaritan Woman who we read about in John 4.  The following video helps us to understand something of how her encounter with Jesus, the ultimate water giver, must have made her feel.

For to be known is to be loved;
And to be loved is to be known.
And they all need this, too.
We all do
Need it for our own.

Salvation is about having a relationship with Jesus.  Of realising that he knows us and loves us and wants the best for us, and in turn to come to know and love him.  When we come to know him we put the things that get in the way of that relationship behind us and live for him.  Our thirst is satisfied and he comes to live within us by his Holy Spirit.  Streams of living water will flow from within us.  When we are saved, we need never be thirsty again.