The Gospel of John

Living Water

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 20- 70

Genre:

Track: 020

Dictation Name: RR197L22

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Lord I have loved the habitation of Thy house and the place where Thy honor dwells. I was glad when they said unto me let us go into the house of the Lord. Let us pray.

Our Father we come into Thy presence again mindful of how great our need of Thee is. How weak and feeble we are apart from Thee. Lord God we need Thee every hour, bless us as we serve Thee. Bless us as we give ourselves to the study of the word and of the things of Thy kingdom. Bless us as day by day we love one another and seek to glorify Thy name in all things. All glory be to Thee God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. We praise Thee, we rejoice in Thy providential care and in the multitude of Thy mercies. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture this morning is from John 7:25-44. Our subject: Living Water. John 7:25-44.

“Then said some of them of Jerusalem, Is not this he, whom they seek to kill?

26 But, lo, he speaketh boldly, and they say nothing unto him. Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ?

27 Howbeit we know this man whence he is: but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is.

28 Then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught, saying, Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am: and I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not.

29 But I know him: for I am from him, and he hath sent me.

30 Then they sought to take him: but no man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come.

31 And many of the people believed on him, and said, When Christ cometh, will he do more miracles than these which this man hath done?

32 The Pharisees heard that the people murmured such things concerning him; and the Pharisees and the chief priests sent officers to take him.

33 Then said Jesus unto them, Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto him that sent me.

34 Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, thither ye cannot come.

35 Then said the Jews among themselves, Whither will he go, that we shall not find him? will he go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles, and teach the Gentiles?

36 What manner of saying is this that he said, Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, thither ye cannot come?

37 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.

38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

39 (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)

40 Many of the people therefore, when they heard this saying, said, Of a truth this is the Prophet.

41 Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee?

42 Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?

43 So there was a division among the people because of him.

44 And some of them would have taken him; but no man laid hands on him.”

The city of Jerusalem was full of pilgrims at the time of this festival, some from Galilee, some from Judea and others from the dispersion throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. Those of Jerusalem were not as familiar with Jesus as were other Judeans and Galileans and so they wondered at the boldness of His speech. Why were the Rabbis silent? Did they recognize Jesus as the Messiah? However the people felt that Jesus could not be the Messiah because His origin was known whereas they held when the Christ cometh no man will know from whence He came. Jesus teaching in the temple told the people ye know me and my origin, I am not here on my own authority but on God’s authority. Ye do not know God nor do you recognize His truth but I know Him for I am from Him and He hath sent me. Earlier the people had called Jesus demonic. This was a way of evading a decision or considering the truth of what He said. By discrediting the messenger they discredited and evaded the message. Our lord’s words however pushed them towards a decision they do not want to make. Are His words and His works true? Our Lord tells them that He is from God and knows God, this in verse twenty nine. As a result some of the people sought to kill Him.

They were unwilling to hear anything that would compel them to take Jesus’ message seriously. However, there were many who believed Jesus, their argument was a simple one: when Christ cometh, if this be not the Christ, will He do more miracles than these which this man hath done? This was a simple and unanswerable argument. On hearing this the Pharisees sent officers to arrest Jesus. The situation was close to getting out of hand as far as the people were concerned. Then in verses thirty three and thirty four our lord tells the people that His stay with them will not be too long. Later when they need Him they will not find Him. The time of opportunity will have passed for not too many years remained before the Jewish-Roman War began in 66 -70 A.D. This would mean the end of the temple, the end of Judea and the end of all the local peoples. But the people refused to understand Him. Was Jesus planning to go out of the country to teach the dispersion? Did He plan to teach the Gentiles? They regarded His language as outrageous. Here were people on the brink of a great disaster and heedless. It can’t happen to us. Rome wouldn’t dare move against us and so on. And they grew more arrogant and blind with each passing year and so they were heedless of our Lord’s words concerning Himself and concerning them.

Men will not hear what they religiously and morally reject. Their thinking is governed by their presuppositions and if God is not their starting point they have no place for Him in their lives and thought. We have then a reference to the last day of the feast, the eighth day. Jesus makes a statement which apparently had reference to a custom which had developed in connection with the Feast of Tabernacles and was observed in the seven days of it. In Plumber’s words and I quote:

“The conjectural reference to the custom of pouring water at the Feast of Tabernacles is probably correct. On all seven days water was brought from the pool of Siloam and poured into a silver basin, some say it was golden, on the western side of the altar of burnt offering. A ceremony not mentioned in the Old Testament. Apparently this was not done on the eighth day. Accordingly Christ comes forward and fills the gap, directing them to a better water than that of Siloam.” Unquote.

Now our Lord’s reaction, His words, are important in more ways than one. Too many zealots over the centuries have had a misplaced zeal. This pouring of the pitcher of water was not a part of the biblical prescription and too many people, had they been present on that occasion, would have condemned the practice of pouring water into a silver basin on the west side of the altar, they would have damned the practice as unbiblical which it was. Majoring in minors, such people would have stressed that the practice was unlawful and so on and on.

On the other hand, our Lord when He condemned anything He did it with total relevance. He never wasted His time by saying ‘well you’re not doing things as the bible prescribes’. The Pharisees then and now are unduly concerned with relatively minor details and they can be on both sides of the question. Instead our Lord speaks of the water of life. If any man thirst, verse thirty seven, let Him come unto me and drink. Moreover in verse thirty eight, He that believeth on me as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. The reference is to several verses, to Isaiah 44:3 and Isaiah 58:11, Zechariah 13:1, 14:8 and so on. We must have water to live and so we take it in daily but our Lord says that those who believe in Him will instead give out the water of life like a living fountain. Our Lord here spoke of the Holy Spirit who was not yet a normative part of the life of the believer. After Christ’s glorification the Holy Spirit became the Christians indwelling power and the purpose of this was and is that Christ’s word and work be carried on. Now the response of many people to this statement was to recognize that Jesus spoke from God, either as the great prophet or as the Christ, according to verse forty. There was an intense dispute over the Messiah-ship, it was assumed that Jesus was a Galilean because Nazareth was the family home, whereas the prophecy of Micah, of Micah 5:2 hailed Bethlehem as the place from whence the Messiah would come.

The dispute was a passionate one. Some men on their own were ready to seize Jesus and to take Him to the Sanhedrin to settle the matter then and there but no man was ready to take the inniative in seizing Him. Basic to this text of ours and the statement of our Lords is that all who believe on Him will become springs of the water of life. Our Lord makes us as our new Adam members of His new human race. According to Ezekiel 47:1-12 in the new temple of the messianic era a river will issue forth out of the threshold of the temple eastward. It will come from the altar, from Christ and His sacrifice. This is what Ezekiel tells us. It will be a trickle, but as it goes out into all the world it will spread out until it becomes a mighty river and touches all things in creation. So we are told emphatically by Ezekiel that Christ the River and the Water of Life will in due time alter the whole the world. Now it is interesting there are many verses in that passage of Ezekiel that are highly quotable such as:

“He that cometh to the water of life, to the water shall have eternal life.”

And so on. When you go to the Sacramento airport as you approach the off ramp, Richards off ramp, a little before it you will see the Sacramento waterworks building, the old building, built before the war. What does it do, what does it say? Well it is a central part of the water works, or it used to be, but it still functions and it has all along the front a verse from Ezekiel about the water of life.

That tells you what kind of country we were in the years before the war, when one of the more common things in state capitols was a statue of Moses because his law was the law of the land. I wonder what happened to all those statues of Moses, were they broken up? This stream of the water of life Ezekiel tells us will grow larger and wider and it will create a new world. Believers are new and living temples of Christ and His spirit. The new creation began with our Lord’s resurrection and it continues with our regeneration. As the life of the faithful continues and as the people of the new creation increase and succeed in their service so too the waters of the river of life nourish all the world. This is a picture of the world triumph of Christ’s kingdom. We are repeatedly told of that victory, John 7:38 and Ezekiel 47:1-12 tell us that we as living temples of Christ are God’s means whereby the world is made new. The importance of the believer in his calling is thus stressed. The triumph of the faith rests upon the people of the faith. Before that victory is possible the believer must see that He is not the end of God’s purpose but a means whereby God’s kingdom is realized on earth. Let us pray.

Our Father, Thou hast called us to be nourished by the water of life and to become sources of the water of life so that all men and all nations may be brought into Thy kingdom. We thank Thee for Thy nourishing of us. We thank Thee for Thy healing and restoring word, we thank Thee our Father that Thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us so that we may in all things say boldly ‘the Lord is my helper, I shall not fear what man may do unto me’. How great and marvelous art Thou oh Lord and we praise Thee. Make us joyful that all Thy promises to us in Christ are yea and amen. So be it oh Lord, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question] I’d like to just make a comment and see what you have to say about it. We have the expression, the spirit filled Christians today, now would it be fair to assume that started after the [unknown] and before that was not possible?

[Rushdoony] After Pentecost. Now, the Spirit filled Christian is a common expression and it’s a poor one. Because the expression assumes that the Christian is the terminal point. Go out to the service, get filled with the Spirit, no. the whole point of both Ezekiel and of our Lord’s statements in this passage are that we are to be sources out of which the Spirit fills to all the world, to all around us. And this is one of the great disasters of our time, that the Christian is seen as the end of everything, the end of God’s work, the end of the Spirit’s work and I say that that is wrong if scripture is right! We are not the terminal point. If what our Lord is saying is true then the Christian is not the one who is filled with Spirit but out of whom the Spirit flows in terms of Godly work, Godly fruit to all men and peoples around him or her. Yes?

[Question] Taking that correction in hand, then going before the Comforter, going to the Christian before the Comforter, how did that operate, how were they able to…

[Rushdoony] Well before the coming of the Holy Spirit we did have the Holy Spirit. We see Him working in the Old Testament, we see references to Him and David says ‘take not Thy spirit from me’. But the Holy Spirit was not the regular fact, it was especially to men who God used mightily, a presence. But it was not the normative fact and since His coming it is the normative fact in the life of the Christian that the Spirit works in us and through us. Through us, this is what we have to stress. Both the church and the believer in the past century and a half or more have become focused on themselves. We’ve seen it in dramatic ways, we’ve seen for example, within the circle of Roman Catholicism, the greatest concentration on the doctrine of the church ever in Vatican. And this was further stressed in Vatican 2. You’ve seen in Protestant circles the various world counsel of church conferences, of faith and order. Their concentration has been on the church, not on Christ! It’s been a totally self-absorbed concentration, an attempt to build a power institution. Then, within the realm of the individual believer you had all kinds of cults within the Catholic Church stressing the individual piety and the individual experience, you’ve had within Protestantism beginning in England the Keswick movement which stressed the personal experience of the Holy Spirit in which you went there and gushed endlessly about what you experienced with no results. The total results of the Keswick movement in the world at large were very limited.

A handful of Scots did go out and do some missionary work of note but most of the people who went and it included among those who went some very wealthy and prominent Christians as well as a lot of common folk concentrating on how beautiful their experience was. The world was falling apart! From say 1850 to the present the world has been collapsing, you’ve had some of the most disastrous events in all of history. And what have these people done, they’ve concentrated on their inner experience. It is a form of madness to point it politely, it is not good it is evil, it is a total self-absorption, the church and the believer. And this is why although you have nominally more Christians now than you’ve ever had before the United States the Christians are the most impotent segment of the population. So this is certainly a judgment on the church. Everyday fresh horrors are perpetuated against Christians the world over, in the Muslim world they are feeling totally uninhibited now to kidnap Christian children to sell them into slavery and the traffic flows from Sudan through Ethiopia into the whole Muslim world. And what are Christians doing about it? Nothing. They’re just being filled with the spirit or just building up the church. I think its blasphemous, I really do, I think it’s a monstrous evil.

Yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Well of course the Old Testament speaks of the word going out unto all the gentiles and the Jews were busy propagating it all over the Roman world. So they assumed that perhaps Jesus was going to join the Pharisees who were going out and like them, preaching to the Gentiles.

[Question] The Pharisees were going out to the Gentiles?

[Rushdoony] Yes remember our Lord says they were ready to cross any number of seas to win one convert, and would make him worse than themselves when they were through. Any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us close with prayer.

Our Father, we thank Thee for Thy word. We thank Thee that Thy word speaks to the heart of all things. Make us hearers and doers, grant that streams of living water go out from us to all men and nations, to all to whom we have contact. Make us instrumental in making the kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. In His name we pray, and now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.