Hello all. I’d like to thank Pastor Fred for his comments here last night and I hope he does let his light shine and I hope I do the same also. Some of you might be surprised by my saying I hope I do the same, but I think in ministry, we need to be watching ourselves and doing what we can to make manifest the love and truth of God.
Before I get to the blog, I also ask prayer for my mother. She had a dear friend being driven back from an operation by her husband when he said he felt dizzy and needed to pull over. The next thing he knew, he woke up in the hospital, the car had rolled over, and his wife had died instantly. My mother is taking it hard. I ask prayer for this husband also as I’m sure he’ll be feeling a lot of guilt.
Tonight, we continue our look at the Trinity. We’re going to be in the gospel of John still and looking in chapter 7 at verses 37-39:
37On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. 38Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” 39By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
It’s the last day and again, we have Jesus crying out. It’s the same emphatic tone that we’ve seen already in this passage. Not only that, he’s standing. Usually, teachers sat when they taught. Jesus stands and is most likely addressing everyone at the feast about streams of water flowing from them.
The people had been drinking water all week from the pool of Siloam. Jesus is taking this imagery and saying that if anyone believes in him, as the Scripture says, streams of living water will flow from him. We have two questions at this point.
First off, where does the Scripture say this? Most likely, this just like the reference to the prophets in Matthew 2, is a reference to Scripture in general and not a specific verse. If you take the Scriptures as a whole and the message the prophets were wishing to convey, you will find the concept Jesus is speaking of.
Second, how could the streams flow from the believer? It’s important to realize that Jesus in saying that does not mean that we are the source of the living water. Instead, he is treating us as if we are conduits through which this living water will flow.
Jesus has spoken of living water already to the woman at the well so we can see the principle at work. She became the messenger to everyone else and this should be something startling to us. If we believe in Christ, we can be the ones through which his message of life flows to others.
And let’s not overlook Christ’s understanding of himself. This is a high view he has in speaking at the Jewish feast and saying that his message is the message that that feast represented. Is it any wonder the guards came to arrest him?
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