Life is serious.  Sabrina, who is going to be 18 at the end of this month, recently said, “I wish I could be seven years old again.”  As we grow up physically and spiritually, life doesn’t get less serious but more. For some here, 2017 was a very difficult year. For some 2018 will be. You need one main thing to get through this year and not just get through it but to get through it, no matter what you face, more than a conqueror: to see Jesus as a never-ending fountain of life giving water that you are to drink from continually.

We all know what it is like to be thirsty.  You wake up in the morning needing a drink.  You go on a jog and need a drink.  Out doing yard work on a hot humid Iowa day and need a drink.  When we go without water for long enough, we thirst.  Well, our souls have thirsts too.  Sprite’s marketing campaign from the 1990’s seems to have stuck.  “Image is nothing. Thirst is everything.  Obey your thirst.”  In our day that seems to be the highest good - obey your thirst.  The problem is, it doesn’t work.  We have all experienced the words of The Rolling Stone’s Mick Jagger - “I can’t go no satisfaction, cause I try and I try and I try and I try.”

We are all thirsty people.  And one way to describe our fundamental problem is that we have obeyed our thirst and it has left us still thirsty, sometimes even more.  We have obeyed our thirst giving us a short-term fix rather than embracing God’s gift which would satisfy our thirst forever.  And in a way it is like taking drugs.  A heroin addict needs more to satisfy his craving after five years than when he first started.

CS Lewis (Mere Christianity) said, “Earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy your soul, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”  What’s the real thing?  What is God’s cure for a thirsty soul?  God’s cure to our thirst: Jesus Christ.  Only Christ can quench your thirst.  In these verses we see 1) an amazing invitation to have your thirst quenched, 2) how to have the deepest thirst of your soul quenched, and 3) the outcome of having your thirst quenched.

An amazing invitation to have our thirst quenched

The timing of this event is important for us to understand.  This took place during the Feast of Booths.  On the last day, or the great day as the text calls is, there was a water pouring ceremony where water was drawn from the pool of Siloam and poured around the altar.  This ceremony was to commemorate God’s miraculous provision of water for the Israelites in the wilderness when Moses struck the rock at Horeb (Exodus 17:1-7).  It was at this time, the Lord Jesus stood up and loudly proclaimed, "If anyone is thirsty, come to me and drink."

Notice the passion with which Jesus spoke.  Verse 37 says on the great day while this water pouring ceremony was taking place that Jesus stood up and it says, “cried out”.  No doubt he raised his voice in order to be heard, but more importantly, Jesus speaks with a longing desire that his invitation be received.

And what is the invitation?  Well hear the words again.  “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me.”  Come to me.  Some of the sweetest words in the gospels are the invitations from Jesus to “come to me.”  Matthew 11:29 (quote).  When the disciples wanted to shew away some little children, Jesus said, “No, let the children come to me.”  And these words, “Come to me and drink.”  The timing is so significant.  Jesus is saying, “I was the Rock in the wilderness that gushed forth waters to refresh you physically.”  And at the same time he is saying, “I am the ultimate fulfillment of that event, as I give waters to quench a deeper thirst forever (John 4). This much is clear: Jesus has a great desire to satisfy your deepest thirst and therefore invites you to come to him!  The invitation is “come to me.”

How to have our thirst quenched

Jesus says our souls can be quenched by believing in him.  But not believing in the way you may ordinarily think.  Look at how verse drinking in 37 connects with believing in the first part of verse 38 (READ).  So what does it mean to come to Jesus and drink?  Believe in (into) him.  What does it mean to believe in Jesus?  To come to him and drink.  I think we often miss this central idea of faith.  Often we assume faith is almost exclusively affirming a set of facts and making a personal decision (ask Jesus into heart, etc.)  How does Jesus describe faith here?  it is a drinking and being satisfied in Jesus Christ.  Faith in Christ is coming to Christ to have the deepest thirst of your soul satisfied.  Faith is seeing and enjoying Jesus as more valuable than anything else.  If a nomadic family is making their way through the desert, out of water, and comes upon an oasis, he doesn’t stand aloof, analyzing in order to make a stoic, dispassionate decision.  No!  They run with great passion to the Oasis to quench their thirst!  The devil has an orthodox belief in who Jesus is.  But he doesn’t come to Jesus to drink and be satisfied!

Jesus is FULL in himself (Colossians 2) and He is the source of every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3).  So come to him and believe in him.  As Savior?  Yes, of course.  As Lord?  Yes.  But more - a soul-satisfying Savior and Lord.  The invitation is, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink, believing I am the final source of his eternal satisfaction.”

The outcome of having our thirst quenched

Out of the heart, will flow rivers of living water.  Literally it says, out of his “belly”.  I think the NASB uses a phrase I find helpful when it says, “from his innermost being”.  That’s the point.  From the deepest part of your life.  In other words, the place you really live from.  Proverbs 4:23 says, “Watch over your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life."  

In that place.  The deepest place you truly live from, rivers of living water will flow out.  What does this mean?  Powerful, refreshing, life experienced now.  Eternal life.  Verse 39 says this is actually the life and energy of the Holy Spirit.  Read verse 39.  When Jesus spoke these words, the Spirit had not yet been poured out, so these words were prophetic or speaking about a future day.  After Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins, rose again to conquer death, he ascended to the Father.  And from there he was given the Holy Spirit which was poured out on the Day of Pentecost (mighty rushing wind and they were filled with Spirit).

The outcome of drinking and being satisfied in Christ is powerful, refreshing, unending life through the indwelling Spirit, starting now and going on to eternity.

If Jesus is inviting us to come to him and drink and live like this; if the essence of life in Christ is finding him as fully loaded and satisfying to our souls, then this changes everything and must be our main pursuit in 2018.  And the implications that flow from this are incalculable.  You begin to realize it touches every area of life.  But I want to leave you with six implications of this truth.  

1) Shows us what evil is and how we fight it in our lives

The essence of sin is pursuing anything else to satisfy this soul-thirst.  We see this is Jeremiah 2:13 says,

For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Sin at its root, is turning away from God to something else to fill what only God can fill.  It is a deadly danger to drink from the dry river beds of the world.  Therefore, your fight against sin is to see the surpassing worth of Christ and seek full satisfaction in him!

2) Changes how we view repentance - as liberating and pursued, not crushing and avoided

Repentance is an invitation to leave the bone dry wells we try to draw water from in order to drink from Christ and live!  Therefore, we should be eager to repent, because we are essentially saying this broken cistern cannot give me what my soul craves.  I need Jesus Christ and his forgiveness, acceptance, love, peace, joy, fullness, etc.  Acts 3:19: “Repent and turn back in order that your sins may be blotted out and times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.”

3) It changes how we approach bible reading and prayer (and other spiritual disciplines)

Bible reading isn’t an end in itself.  We should never do it just for the sake of doing it.  It is a means to an end.  We are to read the bible (and I do commend reading the bible) and pray as a way of coming to Jesus in faith to “draw waters from the wells of salvation” for our thirsty souls (Isaiah 12:3). Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for the way they read the bible and we need to hear this:

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. (John 5:39-40)

4) It changes our perspective of corporate worship.  

Corporation worship is pursuing our soul’s satisfaction in Christ together.  So my aim through preaching (and Reid’s) is to bring you into a deeper delight in Christ.  Same with Luke, Alissa, and the worship team.  This should be our goal - each one of us (gifts).  Because when more and more people are brought into the enjoyment of a soul-refreshing Savior, there is a cumulative effect - and we get more and more of a taste of heaven on earth.  A greater corporate delight in him and sense of his nearness.

5) It changes our view of evangelism.  

Evangelism is helping others to see how infintely satisfying Jesus is!  You are not trying to get people to buy into something that is kind of a downer.  But I cannot do that if I don’t taste it!  I think we ought to seek the Lord that this next year he would use each one of us in the conversion of others to Christ.  What is this salvation like?  Like coming to a wedding banquet (Luke 14). Like finding a treasure hidden in a field (Matthew 13:44).

6) Shows us suffering and trials are not barriers, but can be a gateway to a deeper enjoyment of Christ

For some last year was the hardest in your life.  And yet, you are closer to the Lord and enjoy deeper fellowship with him now than ever before.  Terry Virgo said, “God has a way of making us thirsty for him.”  He often uses our most painful experiences to produce a deep thirst in us.  Psalm 63:1 is a verse we love so much: “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you; as in a dry and weary land where there is not water.”  When David wrote this, he wasn’t sitting in his music studio, sipping a cup of coffee.  David wrote this while in the wilderness running for his life from his own son Absalom who wanted to kill him and take his throne.  And God met him there!  Verse 2-3 continues: “So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.”  So time that feels like wilderness wanderings can turn into an oasis of the presence and love of Christ.

Are you thirsty?  Jesus stands here among us today and cries out, “If anyone is thirsts, let him come to me and drink!”  In C.S. Lewis’ book, The Silver Chair, Jill encounters Aslan - who is the Christ figure.  She is dying of thirst.  He tells her to come and drink from His stream.  Her question has resounded in the hearts of all who have considered the claims of Christ through the centuries:

“Will you promise not to do anything to me, if I do come?” Aslan said:  “I make no promise,” “Do you eat girls?” she said. “I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it. Then Jill said:  “I daren’t come and drink,” Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.  “Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer.  “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.” “There’s no other stream,” said the Lion.

There is no other stream.  In vain you will look for it.  There is no other source to drink from and truly be satisfied - only Christ.  I suppose there is a risk though.  You will have to leave the empty wells you’ve been camped at - which can be hard.  But they are empty.   So what are you waiting for?  Jesus invites you right now, today and in all of 2018, and the rest of your life, “Come, drink, live!”