About this sermon
In the second half of John 7, everyone in Jerusalem has a theory about Jesus, and John lets readers watch them guess wrong. Jesus settles it by standing up and speaking for himself. He comes from the Father, though the crowd thinks it knows all about his hometown. He is returning to the One who sent him, so the time to seek him is short. On the great day of the Feast of Booths, when the priests poured out water at the altar, he cries, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink,” and promises the Spirit as rivers of living water that flow through believers to others. The officers sent to arrest him come back saying, “No one ever spoke like this man.” Each hearer must still answer who Jesus is.
Sermon transcript
The people of Jerusalem therefore said, Is not this the man whom they seek to kill? And here he is, speaking openly, and they say nothing to him. Can it be that the authorities really know? But we know where this man comes from, and when the Christ appears, no one will know where he comes from. So Jesus proclaimed as he taught in the temple, You know me, and you know where I come from, but I have not come of my own accord. He who sent me is true, and him you do not know. I know him, for I come from him, and he sent me. So they were seeking to arrest him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come. Yet many of the people believed in him. They said, when the Christ appears, will he do more signs than this man has done?
The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering these things, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent officers to arrest him. Jesus then said, I will be with you a little longer, and then I am going to him who sent me. You will seek me and you will not find me. Where I am, you cannot come. The Jews said to one another, where does this man intend to go that we will not find him? Does he intend to go to the dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? What does he mean by saying, you will seek me and you will not find me, and where I am, you cannot come? 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 has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.
Now he said this 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. When they heard these words, some of the people said, this really is the prophet. Others said, this is the Christ. But some said, is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was? 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 who said to them, why did you not bring him? The officers answered, no one ever spoke like this man. He answered them, have you also been deceived?
Has any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed. 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. Let’s ask God’s blessing on the reading of his word and the preaching of it. Lord God, Father in heaven, we ask that as you have inspired this, your precious word, preserved it for us today, that we might have it here. We ask that you would open up the eyes of our hearts by your spirit, that we might receive the life that is here, that you might open up and be present in the hearing, that you might be glorified and we might be edified, built up, comforted, challenged and blessed.
We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. You may be seated. Will the real Christ please stand up? Some of you may have seen on television a show called To Tell the Truth. It was a show. It’s in black and white to tell you how old, how long ago it was. And as part of my sermon research, I found some episodes on YouTube. So you can look those up later. But for decades, this television show called To Tell the Truth, they would put three people who all claimed to be the same person. This would have been an obscure figure that you wouldn’t have necessarily known. And they would read a few biographical, a short biographical sketch of the person, and then ask this panel, usually celebrities, so you get people to watch, who get a few seconds to ask a few questions of one of the three participants.
They attempt to weigh the answers and then make a guess. And then at the end, after they’ve all made their guesses, the host gives the famous line that the show was remembered for. Will the real such and such please stand up? And usually, it was quite a surprise. One of the three who had been sitting quietly the whole time stands up, revealing their true identity. And I think as we look at the second half of John chapter 7, there’s a little bit of that going on here. The crowd in Jerusalem is the panel. They’ve heard the stories, they’re looking at the evidence, and every one of them has a guess. Is he a good man? Is he a deceiver? Maybe he’s the prophet. Is he the Christ? And in the middle of all that speculation, Jesus stands up, clarifies things, and claims his identity.
And in many ways, the culture today, we’re not so different from that crowd. Ask around today and you’ll find, you’ll hear Jesus was a great moral teacher. He was a revolutionary. He was a mascot for my personal political cause. He was a myth. a source of personal comfort that some people hold on to, a lucky charm, a figure from history. And even in the church, though, sometimes we can hold in our minds a Jesus assembled from our upbringing, our experiences, our preferences, be developing our own theories. And the question is whether any of those are the real Christ. Now, as we look at the Gospel of John, it’s very interesting to read the Gospel of John in relation to the other synoptic Gospels. It seems to be clearly written after the other three, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
And in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there’s a moment that’s kind of famous where Jesus turns to his disciples and asks, who do people say that I am? He asks Peter. And Peter answers, and then Jesus says, but who do you say that I am? But in the Gospel of John, we find John laying out that situation, only he doesn’t do it so succinctly, and he doesn’t do it explicitly. He shows rather than tells. Jesus is not asking the question here, but we find the crowd answering. Who is this Jesus? And the crowd answers it, and they answer it wrong again and again. And John writes here our story with dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is a situation, literary term, in which the audience, the readers, know more than the characters in the story. So as we hear them spouting off, Isn’t he supposed to be in Bethlehem?
What is this thing about Galilee? We know, as the readers, more than they seem to understand, putting us in a situation of dramatic irony. John has told us in the first chapter who Jesus is. Jesus is the Word. He’s come from God. He’s the Word made flesh. And so when the crowd says, well, we know where this man is from, we know better than they do. And the characters, they think they have it all figured out. But John lets us watch them be wrong in ways that accidentally point out to the truth. So who is the real Christ? Well, we see in our passage, everyone has a theory about who Jesus is. But the real Christ doesn’t wait for us to settle it. He stands up, speaks for himself, and invites the thirsty to come.
So John 7, he doesn’t leave the question hanging. Jesus stands and speaks, and he corrects four misjudgments we’ll see in our passage this evening. Four misjudgments that Jesus is correcting. Number one, that he is not from here, but from the Father. Number two, he’s not running away, but he’s returning home. Number three, he’s not just a question to answer, but a person to come to. And number four, he’s not just credentials to cite, but a Christ to come and to hear. So number one, not from here, but from the Father. We find this in verses 25 through 31. As we look at our passage, we see the crowd is confused. They have gotten around, the word has gotten out that the rulers want him dead. And this actually goes back to chapter 5. The first part of chapter 5 is where we find Jesus healing a man on the Sabbath, which we found references to this morning in the first part of the chapter.
Jesus heals the man on the Sabbath, and that is the last straw. It starts incensing the rulers of Jerusalem. So Jesus had gone back to Galilee to perform his feeding of the 5,000. Now he’s back in Jerusalem, and the Jerusalemites know that it’s dangerous, know that they’ve been seeking to kill him. And so they’re puzzled. is, why haven’t they taken him out and killed him already? Maybe they’re starting to recognize his claims. And yet they’re questioning, how can he be the Christ? Because they had this notion that we wouldn’t know where the Christ comes from. He would be, I guess, a divine origin. It’s unclear where they got this idea. We don’t have a clear source that we can point to that there was this is where they got this idea. It’s not clear from the scriptures that they thought we wouldn’t know he would be some sort of alien. that shows up on the scene.
But that is causing them some difficulty. They know that Jesus comes from Nazareth and they expected the Messiah to have origins that they would not know about. So Jesus cries out in verse 28, you know me and yet you don’t know me. You think you know me. They know this figure coming from Nazareth, Jesus of Nazareth, and yet they don’t really know Him, because they think they know all that there is to know about Him. And Jesus says, what you don’t know is my divine origin from the Father. We’ve already seen them have some of this confusion in the previous chapter. when the Galileans said in verse 42 of John 6, is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he say I’ve come down from heaven? They’re convinced we know his earthly origins and that’s all there is to it.
And Jesus says, you don’t know me because you don’t know my father. And yet we see also the divine working of the Lord in verse 30. that the authorities were seeking to arrest him and yet they were prevented because all along, we’ll see John highlighting this throughout his gospel, Everything that happened to Jesus was on purpose. There was no accidents. The Father’s hand was on him from first to last. He didn’t die because he misspoke. He didn’t die because he miscalculated. He laid down his life and it wasn’t going to be a second before God had intended. You even will see later The authorities plan not to kill him during the Passover because of the riot that might start. And yet John points that out to show us this is exactly on Christ’s timetable, on God’s timetable.
And the irony is that the Jews here, they are right about Jesus’ hometown and yet wrong about his ultimate origin. We’ll see later in the passage they start citing Bethlehem and discussing how he doesn’t seem to come from there and yet that of course we know is not the case and they fail to investigate. And the first thing I think we want to look at from this first point is that it’s possible to know a lot about Jesus’ story. know a lot about the concept of Jesus, his story, his teachings, his reputation, and still not know the one who sent him. Sometimes, even in the church, familiarity can be a form of blindness. There’s people that grow up in the church all their lives, and sometimes they may be some of the most prone to say, we know where he comes from.
Talk to countless people. on the boardwalk and other places who, I’ve read the Bible, I know about Jesus, and yet have no clear understanding of the gospel. And they’re keeping things at arm’s length. They think I know enough, and they’re failing to actually get to know the one. They’ve already written it off because they think they already know him. And so it’s worth questioning ourselves, is your knowledge of Jesus secondhand and merely informational? Or do you know him as a person, know him and his father? Secondly, we see that the misunderstanding Jesus clears up in verses 32 through 36 is that he’s not running away, but he is returning home. The Pharisees send the officers to arrest him because they hear the crowd muttering, why haven’t they already gotten him? And then Jesus says, I will be 33, I will be with you a little longer and then I am going to him who sent me.
You will seek me and you will not find me. And the crowd begins to make guesses. Where does this man intend to go that we will not find him? We’re going to find this theme especially brought back up in chapter 12. Well, they’re puzzled. What sort of physical location does he intend to go to? And we’ll find Jesus also speaking to the disciples in chapter 14 in the upper room, and they remain confused themselves. Jesus is saying, I’m going back to where I came from. And this is another point, another pointing to his divine origin, his origin from the father. I’m going back to the father, this is not my home and I’m going back to him. And there the crowd’s sarcastic guess is in some ways we could say is a prophecy because he will go to the Greeks Chapter 12 will bring this out through the cross and the resurrection and the church’s mission.
Chapter 12 will bring out through his death, he will spread and go to the ends of the earth in his mission. But to the crowd, the leaving that he speaks of sounds like a retreat. They’re coming to arrest him. Jesus says, there’s not much time. I will be with you a little longer, and then I am going. He’s speaking to call them to the sense of urgency. I won’t be available for you to trust in forever. There is a limited time. Not a retreat, but I’m returning to the one who sent me. He is not fleeing, but he’s on a mission with a timetable. You might think of departure board at the airport. The boarding time is fixed. The gate closes. You’ve made up your mind. The plane is leaving. And Jesus is saying, I’m here for a little longer.
Make up your mind. Stop waffling around. You don’t have all of your life. You think of someone who says, I’ll look into the faith someday, and yet we are not promised tomorrow. I urge people when I speak with them on the boardwalk sometimes or other places, and I’ll think about committing my life to Christ. I’ll look into the claims of Christ later. When I’ve got my life settled down, when I’ve got some extra time, when someday I will do it. And I’ve urged them, you don’t know that you have tomorrow. And so Jesus is urging us to come to him while he is here. Because he says, there is a time coming when you will seek me and not find me. And this is a warning, not a taunt, but a warning about postponing the decision But of course, for believers, as Jesus will assure his disciples, Jesus’ departure is not abandoning us.
His departure is what leads to the pouring out of the Spirit, the giving of the Spirit, which leads us directly into number three, that Jesus is not merely a question to answer, but a person to come to. Not a question to answer, but a person to come to. In verses 37 to 39, We see, 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. Now a little bit of background. Paul was giving us some of that this morning. This festival, we actually have some information of what went on during this time. This festival of booths involved elaborate ceremonies at the temple. It was a feast of seven days. And on the seventh day, a golden flagon was filled with water from the pool of Ceylon and was carried in a procession, led by the high priest, back to the temple.
And as the procession approached the water gate on the south side of the court, three blasts from the shofar, a trumpet connected with joyful occasions, was sounded. And while the pilgrims watched, The priests processed around the altar with the flag and with the temple choir singing the Hallel psalm. When the choir reached Psalm 118, every male pilgrim would take a willow and myrtle twigs tied with palm in his right hand and with his left would raise a piece of citrus fruit, a sign of the ingathered harvest. And they would cry, give thanks to the Lord three times. This water then was offered to God at the time of the morning sacrifice along with the daily drink offering of wine. The wine and the water were poured into their respective silver bowls and then poured out before the Lord.
These ceremonies of the Feast of Tabernacle were related in Jewish thought to both the Lord’s provision of water in the desert and the Lord’s pouring out of the Spirit in the last days. The pouring at the Feast of Tabernacles refers symbolically to the messianic age in which a stream from the sacred rock would flow over the whole earth. That’s from D.A. Carson’s commentary on the Gospel of John. explaining the situation. So you have these two images in the people’s mind of this particular feast, the messianic age and the poured out water, which made it a perfect opportunity for Jesus to stand up and bring this teaching. Where he stood up, probably immediately following this, and cries out, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and to drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.
And then John gives us this explanation in case we were to miss the point. 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 glorified. Jesus gives this personal invitation. He draws the attention to himself despite the danger of the authorities. He knows No one can touch him until his hour has come. And so he stands up and gives this invitation. I am what everything is pointing to. The water from the rock, as Paul will describe in Corinthians. And I am the Messiah. I am the one who gives the spirit. We don’t have clarity on what scripture is being quoted there. It seems to not be a direct quote of one scripture, but generally the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.
You may know if you’ve studied this in depth that there is a little bit of discussion of trying to figure out how the grammar should go, and there is a school of thought that thinks It should say, out of his being Christ’s heart will flow rivers of living water. But my own studies, I believe that the consensus is that we have the his heart is the believer. I think that makes the most sense grammatically. You end up having to do a little bit of gymnastics grammatically that don’t work as well to make the his heart be Christ’s heart. And of course, they’re tied together because we are united with Christ. And as we’re united, as we come to him to drink, out of our heart flow the rivers of living water, which is the spirit.
Chapter seven has been full of questions. Where is Christ coming? Where is he going? Is he the Christ? But Jesus’ answer is not just a better argument. but an invitation to a person, come to me. And he says the qualification is thirst. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me. But come and drink. The drinking, you notice here, is in a sense, the flowing will flow out of rivers of living water. The picture here is not a stagnant reservoir, not a lake, not a pond, not filled with the spirit to then be empowered to do what we are to do, but it’s a picture of a river. It doesn’t come from us and it’s not meant to stay with us. but the Spirit is meant to come from Christ as we drink to flow through us and we become the channel, a channel of living water, the channel of that life-giving water.
It’s not self-generated and not our own effort. In the Holy Land, The land of Israel, we have sort of two illustrations. We have the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea, two bodies of water. And the same Jordan River feeds both. Galilee receives and gives. It teems with life. But the Dead Sea is a dead end, has no outlet, and becomes salt. It’s called the Dead Sea because nothing can live in it. And so we are meant to be like the Sea of Galilee with the water coming in from drinking of Christ and flowing out to those around us. The river, a delivery system, not a source. It doesn’t make the water. It carries it from upstream and in a drought it can shrink. And so The rivers are only full by being constantly supplied.
We must come back again and again to drink of Christ. We’re not self-reliant, but we are channels of the Spirit that we receive from Him. So it’s worth questioning, where are you drinking from to satisfy your soul? Where are you thirsty and trying to solve it? with information, with achievement, with distraction, or with Christ, where he can give the living water. And it’s an exhortation to keep drinking. One drink is not enough, but to be filled with the Spirit, like a river, with the ordinary means, the Lord’s Day, the sacraments, and not just live off past experiences of grace, but looking for fresh coming to Christ. Think about the difference between reading about hydration versus drinking a glass of water. We don’t want to merely study how Christ can fill us, but we want to come to him to be filled. and not to be a dead end as well.
The Spirit gives us gifts for the good of others. We’re meant to be someone, we’re meant to be a people that bless and serve others. And that is how we experience more of the Spirit. As we minister to others, as we pour ourselves out in reliance on Christ, we will find ourselves more full of the Spirit that we need. Convicting question to ask ourselves each week might be, who received something of the Spirit through me this week? So there’s two failures, two possibilities of failures in this situation, but one cure. And they both go back to the same place, Jesus’ invitation to come and drink. We don’t want to become a stagnant pool, the spiritual consumer always receiving, never giving. And we don’t want to become a dry channel, the person serving out of an empty well, running on performance and burning out.
But as we drink of Christ and bless others, we’ll be filled with the Spirit. We’re the channels, not the source. And the overflow is evidence of life, not payment for it. So this should be also a comfort to weary servants. The supply is His, not yours. Paul speaks in Colossians of serving in the strength that Christ supplies, and Peter does as well. Well, number four in our passage, verses 40 through 52, we see closing up The last misunderstanding Christ is correcting is not credentials to cite, but a Christ to hear. The crowd is citing scripture in verses 40 to 43. They’re speaking of the prophet we read this morning in Deuteronomy. The prophet that they were expecting, not only the prophets throughout, but the great prophet. which is what they were expecting. And in some sense, Christ was that, but he was more than a prophet.
And some say the Christ, but they’re questioning, can he be the Christ if he comes from Galilee? And of course we know the answer, right? John is assuming we know the origin from Luke, that Christ grew up in Galilee, but he was born, of course, in Bethlehem to fulfill the prophecy. And coming from Joseph and Mary, David’s line. They have the right question, the crowd does, but they never actually check the facts. And then the Pharisees send these officers to come and arrest him. They were sent to arrest him, but they return empty-handed because they actually hear Him. They come and they hear, they listen to His words and they’re astounded, they’re amazed. No one ever spoke like this man. The Pharisees in response have dismissed Jesus. They won’t come to even hear Him themselves and they’ve ruled out because He doesn’t fit their credentials.
They’ve already written Him off They write off the crowd, they write off the officers and ridicule him. Have any of the rulers of the Pharisees believed in him? They dismiss everyone as ignorant of the law. These people don’t even know the law, which of course is ironic as Nicodemus immediately offers a correction Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing? So by citing the crowd that doesn’t know the law, they are ignoring the law themselves. They’re ignoring the conditions to give a man a hearing before you have written him off, declared him guilty, and dismissed him. And even in their dismissal, search and see, no prophet arises from Galilee. This, of course, was not the case. We know for sure that the prophet Jonah came from Gathhefer in Galilee, from 2 Kings 14-25.
There may have been other prophets, but perhaps the Pharisees would have written off Jonah as not a true prophet either, for his own ministry in their day. But the Pharisees dismiss Nicodemus’ plea to hear Jesus based on their own judgment, their own credentials. Like a hiring committee that rejects the qualified, skilled, experienced candidates because their resume doesn’t have the right school on it. They won’t even give him a hearing. Because those who actually come and hear even sent to arrest him, they are disarmed. They are amazed. And so we are wary of using our credentials, church background, Bible knowledge, status, upbringing, as a shield against truly coming and hearing Jesus. We can come sometimes to the scriptures thinking, I already know what this passage is about. and not letting it truly speak to us, convict us from the heart.
The officers don’t stay neutral. Their hearing prompts them to respond and believe. And so we ought to read the Gospels, the whole word of God the same way. Well, in conclusion, Remember the game show. The people claimed to be the same person, and two of them were lying. The panel had to guess, and the whole drama of that show depended on the real one staying quiet until the end. But we see a shift in John 7, turns that around. The real Christ does not stay quiet. He doesn’t wait for the panel to reach the verdict, sit back while the crowd argues. He stands up. and calls people, invites them, cries out, and he does more than identify himself because he invites, invites us to come and drink. All through this chapter, people said they had different ideas about who Jesus was and yet the real Christ comes and corrects all of their notions.
He’s not from here, but He’s from the Father. He’s not running away, but He’s returning home. He’s going to the Father that He came to, came from, by way of the cross. And the window to seek Him will not stay open forever. He’s not merely a question to answer, but He’s a person to come to. If anyone thirsts, drink, Jesus says. He’s not credentials to cite, a badge to wear, someone to be dismissed or used as a credential to dismiss others. The scholars, the rulers, and the crowd all had their own credentials and missed him. The officers, who had none, heard him and said, no one ever spoke like this man. In the other Gospels, Jesus asks, who do people say that I am? And then he asks the disciples, but who do you say that I am?
John doesn’t record that moment here, but he doesn’t need to. He’s let the crowd answer. We’ve heard the guesses, the admirers, the critics, the ones who want to cite scripture and miss him completely, the ones who stand on the sidelines, like Nicodemus, too afraid to actually confess him. And then the question comes to us. Not who do people say that he is, but who do you say that he is? And to look at what he’s offering. The one the leaders wanted to arrest would be arrested. but on his timetable. The one temple would be lifted up on a cross. And John tells us what flows from that. The spirit from Jesus who would be glorified. The spirit who’s not a gift to hoard, but he makes rivers out of the thirsty. And so if you come to Jesus and you drink, Don’t be a stagnant pool or a dead end, but come back again and again drinking so that he flows through you into his church, into your home, into the world that he loves.
Amen. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we thank you, you have sent Jesus, and he has not been silent, he’s not left us guessing, but made clear who he is, the true Messiah, the living one, the source of living water, the only source of the Spirit. Lord, we ask that you would give us thirst for the Spirit, that we might come and drink and be filled We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen. Well, let’s respond by standing and singing hymn 272. Hymn 272, I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say.
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