How about for you guys? The question, when have you been so thirsty that you would wanna say, I’m dying of thirst? Can you remember a time I can, for me, I was only 10 years old, so I was about the age of some of the kids here and I was at, on the farm in South Dakota where I grew up. We were out bailing hay. Do you guys know what that is? Bailing hay out in the hot South Dakota sun where it’s humid and burning down on you. The bales will keep coming in. And even at 10 years old, I was working hard, sweating up a storm, and I was dying of thirst. And then I remembered the makeshift canteen my mom had made out of an old bleach bottle, thoroughly rinsed, and then she’d filled it up with water the night before, put it in the deep freeze, and then there was this chunk of ice. And you come to that and you’re just parched and you put it to your mouth. You wanna be careful not to rush it because that ice could kind of come and hit and you hit your teeth. But if you’re patient, that water just comes on down. And I gotta tell you. Oh, it was so good. It was the best water I’ve ever had. I still remember that vividly in my mind. How about you? How about us in our own lives? Do you ever feel parched, dried out, maybe even, you know, cracking from life? Our Bible text today, it’s in John chapter seven, so if you have your Bibles or devices there, I encourage you to turn to that with me. I’m gonna begin reading at verse 38. Our Bible text today captures kind of a similar moment of profound thirst. Jesus is standing in the middle of the temple courts during a big Jewish festival, and he declares that he is the living water. And so I want us to look at how thirsty we might be, and not just for water, but for something that quenches the very deepest part. Of who we are. So let me begin reading at verse 38. On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink whoever believes in me. As scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. By this he meant the spirit. Whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up until that point, the Spirit had not been given since Jesus had not yet been glorified. This is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let me pray for us as we continue. Lord Jesus, you spoke loudly in a temple crowd saying that you are the living water. Well now may your voice cross the pages of scripture and the centuries, and may we hear in our own hearts. You speak to us now. Come drink, have your thirst be quenched, and maybe learn how we can be completely satisfied in you and you alone, Jesus. Ask in your precious name. Amen. Hey, receive this blessing just straight up.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and love of God, the peace that passes all understanding, may it be yours. Amen. You know, it’s actually pretty incredible how Jesus chose a very strategic time to make this offer of him being the living water. Let me explain the whole context here of our, of our, uh, text from John, chapter seven. It’s during the Jewish Festival of the Feast of Booths or of Tabernacles there. This was to commemorate the time when God provided water in the desert. For the people of Israel. And so there was this water ceremony during the Feast of Booths or Sukkot, where a priest would lead this, this noisy jubilant procession from the temple courts down to this pool of Siloam. Draw water out with a golden pitcher from the pool. March back, everyone’s singing and uh, like crazy and shouting, and then the priest would pour it on the altar. Another priest on the other side would be pouring down wine. And so this would go on for seven days straight, and on the last and final day, the eighth day, there was no water pouring. And so picture this, the one day where there wasn’t any water being poured out, that’s when Jesus suddenly stands up in the middle of the temple crowd and he declares himself. To be the source of living water and that moment, it would’ve hit everyone like a thunderbolt. No, uh, mistaking what he’s saying, that there’s no water there, and yet, here’s the Messiah offering living water, which we know from our text to be the Holy Spirit and eternal life to anyone who would look to him in faith. And it’s really a profound picture of what he offers to you and to me today, what he gives us, so I wanna explore this in a few different ways. The first is just hear God’s wide open invitation. I mean, from the earliest pages of the Bible, we find God inviting people to draw near to him. And when the Lord speaks through what Isaiah was saying, what Andrew read Forest just a bit ago. Come all you who are thirsty, come to the waters and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. I mean, Jesus is announcing this, this wide open invitation. No restrictions, no prerequisites, just come, and the same invitation, it stands in Jesus’ words. In John seven, and also it’s in John chapter four when he meets with the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman, to whom he said, if you knew the gift of God, he would’ve given you living water. This is a theme throughout Jesus’ entire ministry and God’s heart throughout scripture from cover to cover is to call us into a relationship with him. And notice how inclusive the language is in John seven. Anyone who’s thirsty in John four, whoever drinks, I mean, our father is always calling to everyone to come.

It’s God’s desire that everyone come to know him and receive eternal life. And so for you, I don’t know where you’re at, you might be sitting here feeling that maybe you’re undeserving. Of God’s love or you’re just too distant or maybe just so messed up. Well hear this. Jesus opens this invitation to every thirsty soul. If that’s you, there’s no sin too great. There’s no past too tangled, no burden, too heavy that can keep you from his life giving water. You know, I mentioned this feast of Booths. It commemorates, uh, the god’s people in those wilderness wanderings after he delivered them out of Egypt. They’re a place called REDI and they’re complaining ’cause there’s no water in the desert. And you know, that kind of makes sense. And they were then quarreling with God and they were doubting God’s provision. That’s where the rub came. And so in response, God instructs Moses to take his staff and strike a rock. It’s that horror, which is just northwest of Mount Sinai. And miraculously, as Moses does this, according to God’s word, water pours out from the rock, hence the festival of booths with water and this act of divine care by God. You know, it’s remembered then by the people during Sukkot every year as they celebrate God’s faithful provision, even in the middle of a dry desert. And throughout all their wanderings, God shows up and cared for his people. There’s a praise and worship song of invitation. We’re actually gonna sing it after the message here today. It goes like, part of it goes all who have sailed on the rivers of heartache, all who are weak, all who are weary. It’s come. And that is us sometimes, isn’t it? Weary, weak. Maybe even battered by life storms or feel like you’re living like in a parched desert out of, uh, rejection or abandonment or confusion might feel like you’re drifting along in life along rivers either from disappointment or regret. Listen, our Lord Jesus sees every tear, hears every unan unspoken prayer, and he says The invitation’s there come, come to the rock. Come to the fountain, just as Jesus broke the silence of ritual or religion in that temple. So today for us, he breaks through our barriers, whether it be shame or regret or doubt or distance that he says, come the promise in Isaiah 55 that Andy read continues. Listen. Listen to me and eat what is good and you will delight in the riches. Richest, the Faires. In other words, Jesus isn’t just offering something for mere survival. He’s saying come to a lavish feast. Abundant satisfaction in him. What is your favorite food? I can tell you mine. It’s a godfather’s pizza, humble pie on a golden crust.

They’re available at, I think love’s truck stops heading out of Phoenix. Three different directions out of town. I know where they’re at. How about you? Can you imagine being invited to the Feast of the Lamb with the richest affair? That’s the invitation to you. It’s not just about survival, it’s about lavishing, God’s love on us. And yeah, we don’t come to God with the best of ourselves. We don’t, and we come thirsty and broken. We come hungry and searching. But it’s precisely to those people that God’s grace finds us and then can pour into us, and then God promises to seat us at a feast with the best of affair. It’s a great exchange to hear God’s wide open invitation. And secondly, stop spending your life on that, which does not satisfy. Can you kind of feel the tension in these Bible texts today? As Jesus comes in and shatters religion or ritual in the temple, the prophet Isaiah, he writes this invitation to all to come who are thirsty and then asks this penetrating question, why spend money on what is not bred and your labor on what does not satisfy? Why pour yourself, in other words, into empty pursuits, why labor for that which leaves you still broken or exhausted? We need a reality check. I. Because we live in a world that shouts endless solutions for that inner thirst that each of us has. But we find ourselves going to new gadgets or promotions or entertainment, or we seek out quick fix spiritualities that never fully quench. There’s a very old church father, long ago, fourth century named Saint Augustine who said this about God, our heart is restless. Until it rests in you. And Jesus alone says, whoever drinks the water I give them, they’ll never thirst. It’s not a temporary fix. He’s promising a soul, satisfying, life altering relationship that fills us then continually from the inside out. When you feel restless or dissatisfied. Where do you tend to go or when heartache just gnaws at you or disappointment sets in, what do you do? Some people we run to social media kinda lose ourselves in our own algorithm. Do you go to comfort food or to some destructive habit or maybe an angry outburst? And Jesus, he, he gently exposes these patterns, not to shame us, but rather to free us. He beckons us away from shallow streams that cannot sustain or satisfy us. Then he draws us to his never ending river of living water, a spring. You ever drank water from a spring? So refreshing. That’s who Jesus is. Here, God’s wide open invitation and stop spending your life on what doesn’t satisfy. And finally, remember God’s invitation even at the end of time. I mean, there’s a very fitting conclusion to the Bible in Revelation. The last book, chapter 21, the Bible says this. To the thirsty, I will give water without cost. From the spring of the water of life. And in the next, and very, actually the very last chapter in the Bible, revelation 22, it echoes this invitation.

Let the one who is thirsty come and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. Friends, those verses are for you. They’re found at the very end of the Bible at the end of time, and they mirror exactly what Jesus is declaring in our text in John seven and what Isaiah prophesied come and drink. In other words, God’s invitation. This is woven cover to cover front to back throughout all of scripture. And this matters because all of us in this world, in this life, we are searching for meaning. In Jesus words, even at the end of time, recorded in Revelation, they stand as this kind of final cosmic call to every generation, to every nation, to every person, to you. And just as we might read the back end of a novel to see how, how the story ends, we open these final pages of scripture and see that even in eternity, Jesus still invites. In other words, it doesn’t matter. How far along in your life journey that you find yourself, that re invitation, it’s there for you right now today. Come to the rock, come to the fountain, come and be set free. Now, I don’t want you to miss how this satisfaction is purchased or from his cross. Jesus says these two words. I thirst. We looked at these Wednesday night at our Len in service, and that’s kind of the dark, negative image that brings us to the positive promise today of being completely satisfied for, from his cross. Jesus says, I thirst. In other words, he took on the dryness of our sin and he endured the full suffering that we deserve, even dying for us in our place. So that we would never have to experience spiritual drought out of his thirst flows, the living waters unending waters of forgiveness, and as he rose, again, victorious over sin, death, and the devil, and then he ascended. It’s so that the Holy Spirit could be poured out on all believers, fulfilling Jesus’ promise in John seven that the spirit who hadn’t been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified. Now through his cross resurrection and ascension, the floodgates are open up, the Holy Spirit is sent, and all who believe in Him are given the power to become children of God and given His Holy Spirit rivers of living water flowing from within. And so the Bible from beginning to end, shouts just one fabulous invitation. Come, come to Jesus taste and see that the Lord is good. That is love endures forever. Find in him the spirit who is the living water welling up from within your own soul. And so today, right now, Jesus still stands and says, anyone who is thirsty come.

Remember that Christ himself is the one who bids us to come and be satisfied in him. And that all the blessings in scripture, God’s forgiveness, his presence, his everlasting love, they’re made real for us because of the broken body and shed blood of Jesus. And so today, Christ’s invitation to you and to me is to come, come to his table. So prepare your heart and come where the bread and the cup. Testify to the sacrifice made once and for all on your behalf so that you need never be thirsty, but find complete satisfaction in Jesus Christ. Join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for inviting us to come and drink. Thank you for inviting us to come and. Have our thirst quenched by the living water that we find only in you. And yes, we confess that we’ve tried to con to quench our thirst in so many other ways, but only you can truly satisfy us. So fill us now with your spirit. Heal our wounds, renew our hearts, and then send us out to share your refreshment with a thirsty and parched world. I ask in Jesus’ precious name and for his sake, amen.