Sermon Cloud

June 8, 2008

John 7 (7 Sermons of Jesus) “Come and Drink”

            After the whole feeding of the 5,000 and walking on water deal, Jesus hangs out in Galilee.  An important and celebrated Jewish festival was approaching: the feast of booths.  There is a lot to this festival, but there are two main things that would happen.  While the people tailgated the temple area (that’s why they called it “booths”), they would pour water and light some lamps to celebrate the ingathering of the harvest and remember God’s provision through Moses in the wilderness. 

This morning’s sermon will be like the text and we will follow its course like a winding river (to keep up with the water imagery!) and we will paddle like crazy for a few then beach our raft and talk about what we’ve seen and then get back in and follow its curves and then beach ourselves again and chat for a few.  Let’s do it.

From Galilee to Jerusalem (1-15)

            Its time for the feast and Jesus’ non-believing brothers make a case that He should go with them and make a public appearance as it would help His disciples and possibly gather more followers. This very practical thinking is rejected by Jesus for a couple of reasons.  First, the Father is calling the shots on when and where Jesus does what He does.  Much of this leans on Nathan’s sermon from chapter 5 where Jesus is identified as God’s Divine Son.  He does what the Father does and says what the Father says.  There is tremendous unity in the Godhead.  This leads into the second reason.  Jesus rests on the wisdom of the Father because the world is very hostile to Him and it’s not quite His “hour” (remember Jesus’ strange remark to His mom in John 2?). 

            Here Jesus cuts to the heart.  The non-believing disciples have nothing to fear because they blindly embrace the value system of the world around them.  Jesus explains verse 1 (people wanted to kill Him) and the reason He would not accompany them to Jerusalem.  The world hates Him because He says what they do is evil (v. 7) and we all really want to be told we are doing ok, right?  Put this in context.  He’s not talking about going to the far reaches of the Roman Empire and talking to wild living Gentiles (even though it does apply to them, too).  He is talking about the epicenter of the Jewish religion!  He confronts the cold-hearted, external religion and calls it evil! 

Jesus remains in Galilee for a second, but then journeys to Jerusalem.  This seems odd at first until you consider His main point. The timing of what Jesus does is determined by the Father, not some pragmatic men.  God has determined that Jesus make a much more low key entrance to the festival.  Notice the debate among the crowd before He comes there.  Some think He’s good (v. 12-13), others not so much.  Jesus shows up and begins teaching in the temple.  This is a bold move for a wanted man. The funny thing is that the crowd is more taken by the fact that He taught well without a formal training than they were by His actual instruction.

A Corrected view of Redemptive History (16-24)

In verse 17, Jesus shows that people would accept His ministry and teaching if they truly wanted to follow God’s will.  But people don’t.  Let’s get out of the boat.  Want to try an interesting question when you are talking out some issues with people that are skeptical about the Bible or Jesus or anything else?  Ask them if you could prove to them that the Bible/Jesus are reliable, would they follow Him.  Very often, you’ll find that honest people will say “no.”  We skew the evidence because we don’t want to be told we aren’t ok and we don’t want to have to follow someone else.  We want to call the shots.  Let’s make it more personal.  Its not just skeptics that struggle with this, but our struggle is much more difficult to notice because you probably think the right things about Jesus and the Bible (at some level at least).  Here is a good litmus test with many facets: How often do you repent?  If you think about it, repentance is one side of the faith coin.  Repentance turns from broken ways of living and faith turns to Jesus and embraces Him as the one that brings life, right?  Let me clarify.  Repentance is not feeling sorry.  Judas felt sorry, but he hung himself.  Repentance is walking away from wrong ways of thinking and living and walking to Jesus.  So what have you repented of this week?  If nothing comes to mind, your real God is likely a self-justifying, status-quo god (you).  The Christian life is one of constant repentance and renewal.  We constantly self-justify.  I saw it in our Memorial Day baseball tournament.  Our people were saying, “Our guys are ok because they are a year younger than everyone else.”  The team that lost in the finals said, “We are ok because our team has been together for 3 years and they just picked up ringers.”  The champs said “We are ok because we won.”  This is the system of the world that Jesus both comes to confront and release us from. 

Jesus brings up the Law probably because people are still upset that He healed people on the Sabbath.  He fires the initial salvo by reminding them that they are quoting the Law, but don’t keep it themselves.  Jesus argues brilliantly in 21-24.  He points out that it was the practice for centuries to circumcise on the 8^th day even if it fell on the Sabbath.  They were, if they want to play by their own method of interpretation, guilty of breaking it even in the area they accused Jesus of breaking it.  But Jesus points out that circumcision preceded Moses, but He doesn’t stop there.  Circumcision pointed towards a future inward reality in the person who took the sign which, as the Prophets clarified, would sometime find a much greater reality in the New Covenant.  In other words, Jesus is making a massive redemptive-historical point here.  Circumcision and the Law point to His ministry where He heals the whole person!  Let’s hop out of the boat again. 

So what?  As religious people are prone to do, they and we tend to miss the proverbial forest and focus on the trees.  God gave the Law and Sabbath regulations as a grace to Israel to show them how to relate to each other and God.  It was a grace for that time and it pointed to a much greater restoration where hearts would be changed and the whole person healed in a way the Law couldn’t do.  In fact, the Law condemns when it is not combined with Jesus’ final work.  I think we repeat this ancient error early and often in the church today.  Ask yourself, what are Christians known for today?  A message of grace and transformation to the whole person?  I doubt it.  More than likely, we are known for stances on politics and morality.  Many times these takes might even be right, but let’s not miss the forest.  Once we see where all of this is going, then our stances on morality will be made with right judgment (v24).  Redemption is Jesus’ goal!

The Mixed Response (25-36)

            Some people wonder if Jesus might be the Christ (Messiah).  Here is where pop-theology takes a life of its own.  Even though nothing in the OT said that the Messiah wouldn’t have a traceable home, many thought this would be the case.  This begins some heavy irony.  They know where He comes from?  Really?  It will be clear that they think He is from Galilee, but He’s really from Bethlehem.        They tried to arrest Him, but it wasn’t his hour.  But He gives insight into that hour when He says that there is a coming day when they won’t be able to find Him.  Why? Because He will be crucified, raised, and ascended to the glory He knew before He came to this earth.  This was His mission. 

Living Water 2.0 (37-52)

            Remember one of the two main images of this festival, water?  In the water-pouring rite, they would celebrate God’s provision in the harvest in the same way God provided water in the desert when they were in the wilderness. But even in the symbolism of the event, the water would eventually stop.  This event had a backward and forward element.  Backward in remembering the wilderness.  Forward in which rivers of living water flowed to the nations (Ez 47:1-9, Zech 13:1).  He is the fulfillment of this festival!     

            In short, this is the same thing He told the Biblically illiterate Samaritan woman, but to this crowd He is pulling the rich background of the OT which the audience accepted. It’s the difference between seeing a diamond in your hand vs. on a black fabric.  It is beautiful either way, but one sets it off!  This festival really pointed towards the day that Jesus was announcing!  His claim is bold.  He is the promised Messiah and once His work on the cross was accomplished, The Spirit would be given internally to all who believe.  This Spirit would be an unquenchable stream of water that would nourish.

            I am convinced that even the “edgiest” and anti-institutional and rebellious among us gravitate towards religion.  We tend to make all of this about things  like what we know, our opinions about what church should be like, our preferences in worship,         our perspectives on morality, the way we raise our children, and lots of things like that.  But where is the living water that replenishes the soul?  This is not unlike my previous point of our lack of repentance.  Repentance doesn’t happen unless we recognize the value in our communion with God and the inability of everything else from clearly sinful things to good things to satisfy the longings of the soul.  Yep, we gravitate to the external.  Let’s be honest about it.  But the gift of the Spirit shows that all of those external issues will be important, but they are all secondary to our enjoyment of the nearness of God.

            And so lots of people just flock to Him, right?  Well, no.  Most don’t know what to do with Him.  As we’ve seen many times in John, several divide out the office of prophet from Messiah. Some put Jesus in one of those categories. Many discredit Him because the Messiah is supposed to be a son of David and hail from Bethlehem.  Um, they have their facts wrong and this closing section is just dripping with deep irony.  Lots of debate about Jesus ensued, but no arrest was made because it wasn’t time yet.

            One last note.  It’s not without significance that Nicodemus enters the fray with a procedural point.  Remember him?  He was the guy Jesus talked to in John 3 where He pointed out that Jewishness is not where salvation was found, but in a new birth that resulted in belief.  At that point, Nicodemus wasn’t convinced.  But have we seen a change?  Yes, I think He is on the road!  His procedural question would have been to Jesus’ benefit.  Instead of a hasty arrest and sham of a trial, a more deliberate questioning could keep Jesus from a vigilante death, essentially.  He obviously doesn’t understand where Jesus was going to go…the cross…but He is at least sympathetic.  Somewhere in these months, Nicodemus seems to be a follower of Jesus by John 19.  Maybe you are somewhere on this path to belief, too.  I love to hear how people went from clueless and not aware of their need for Jesus (John 3) to sympathetic (John 7) to a follower of Jesus (John 19).  Kingdom fact: The ministry of Jesus will bring a wide range of response.  In some in generates only curiosity.  In others it generates angry rejection.  Don’t feel like you are doing something wrong if someone hears this good news and rejects it and you.  For one, this may not be the end of the story…it might be chapter 3 for them.  But even if they stay there, we learned last week that the results are left to God.  The gospel is powerful. Let’s speak it.  And let’s believe it.  And drink from Him. 

            That’s really where this message lands because that’s where this passage lands.  Know that Jesus was the point of the Bible.  He is the living water that the Feast of Booths pointed towards.  He is the point of the Law.  He brings the whole healing circumcision hoped for.  He is the Lord of the Sabbath.  He is the one Sent of the Father who does only what the Father does. Jesus is the undeniable center of John’s gospel.  The trick is that lots of us in here know we are John 19 believers and would affirm every bit of what I just said.  But do we drink from this center point of the Bible or just know that He is the center point?  Jesus came not only to inform humanity of His identity, but to redeem us….to transform us.  We are changed by Him as we drink from Him.  It’s the one thing in life you just can’t have enough of.  You can have too much wine, too much sex, give too much attention to your kids, too much money in your account, too much free time, too much work, and even too much church, but you can never drink too much from Jesus.  Drink.  He’s not far.