Spiritual Thirst

John 7:37-39: " On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed,
" If any one thirst, let him come to Me and drink.
He who believes in Me, as the Scriptures has said, 'Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.'"
This is what Jesus said about the Spirit.

It can be a terrible thing to thirst.
It can be a still more terrible thing not to thirst.
Desire to drink may be a sign that life is exhausted.
The absence of such desire may be a sign that life is extinct.

" If any man thirst," said Jesus.
That is the sole condition of on which we may come to Him. Thirst!
No one makes his way to the well unless see consciously wants water.
" If any man thirst."

The historical setting of this cry of Christ serves as a sounding-board for its message.
The scene is laid in Jerusalem on the eighth day of the Feast of Tabernacles.
Each morning during that festival a procession headed by a priest who went from
the Temple to the Pool of Siloam.
The priest carried a golden vessel.

At the pool he filled that the vessel with water and brought it back to the Temple,
while the jubilant people chanted: " With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation."
(Isaiah 12: 3)
At the west side of the altar of burnt offerings he poured out the water -- a pathetic
little trickle which soon evaporated in the hot sun.

This piece of priestly pageantry was intended to recall to the minds of pious observers
that magnificent picture in Ezekiel 47: 1-9 of the waters flowing beautifully
fertilizing from below the Temple door.
" Everything will live where the river goes." (Verse 9)

Probably Jesus had watched this bit of dramatic religious ceremony during the
seven preceding days when it had been enacted, and as He contemplated it,
His spirit was deeply stirred.
This dreary dribble disappearing in the dust was no fit figure for the sublime prophetic vision.
It was a ludicrous picture.

Suddenly Jesus said: " If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink,
and out of him shall flow rivers."
" Like the wondrous river of the prophet's vision,
So the Holy Spirit floweth full and free;
Larger, deeper, fuller, still the river groweth,
Till it reaches the fulness of the crystal sea."

There are three things about thirst, natural and spiritual, about which we want to consider.

Thirst is instinctive.
Its thirst were not an instinct the human race would be extinct or it could not have existed at all.
As soon as a baby is born it begins to thirst.
In some mysterious way it has the ability to suck.
But suppose it didn't.
Suppose a person had to try to teach an infant to imbibe its mother's milk.
What a hopeless task that would be.

Ian Macpherson in his book, Like A Dove Descending, tells this story:
" We had a little baby once.
He was to all appearances a perfectly normal child, but he had a problem in that
he could not be persuaded to drink.
Despite all our efforts to induce him to do so, we failed to persuade him to partake
of the nourishing liquid without which he could not live.
Before long we were following his tiny white coffin into the cemetery."

Spiritual thirst is also an instinct.
There are some classic expressions of it in the Bible.

" My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." (Psalm 42: 2)

" O God, Thou art my God, I seek Thee, my soul thirsts for Thee;
my flesh faints for Thee, as in a dry and weary land were no water is." (Psalm 63: 1)

Do you personally know anything of this profound spiritual craving?
Do you have a cry from the depths of your being for our Creator?
In the midst of this godless, secular, materialistic age, are you conscious of a longing
for the living God?

The instinct is there for it has been divinely implanted within us.
As the newborn baby thirsts for its mother; so the soul thirsts for its Maker,
and can never be completely satisfied without Him.

Thirst is intense.
All of us are thirsting for something -- wealth, fame, popularity, position, power...
Within each of us there is an acknowledgement that the source of our satisfaction
is not in ourselves.
But how seldom do we turn to the only source of true satisfaction.
Like the poet, we need to register this firm resolve:
" Now the frail vessel Thou hast made
No hand but Thine shall fill,
For the waters of this world has failed
And I am thirsty still."

No other physical necessity is so demanding as our thirst for water.
We can live without food far longer than we can live without water.
The liquid of life is our most insistent natural requirement.

Some years ago, I read of the tragic happening in the lives of two missionaries.
It was about a father and his daughter who were trapped during a dreadful earthquake
which rocked the town of a in Switzerland in 1935.
They were trapped by the fallen masonry in the cellar of a house.

The walls suddenly caved in and the man and his daughter were buried beneath the debris.
Fortunately, neither of them was hurt, but in that confined space they suffered
terribly from claustrophobia and were almost overcome by the heat and lack of fresh air.
And no one knew they were there!

So many buildings had been devastated in the town that it took the rescue-parties
a long time to discover and recover them.
The missionary and his daughter were trapped in that living tomb for four days.
As the slow hours wore on, their greatest problem proves to be thirst.
They hardly felt their hunger at all, but their craving for water became almost intolerable.
So terrible was their thirst that they broke off bits of plaster from the masonary
and sucked from them whatever moisture they contained.
At last they were reduced to such straits that they drank their own waste.

There is a physical condition known as " dehydration."
That is not just normal thirst.
It is an abnormal, psychological condition due to water deficiency.

Years ago in the United States a troupe of calvary was sent out into the sandy wastes
of Texas to find a band of a lawless Indians.
The troop got lost, and in that desert region under the broiling sun the troop
and experienced all the horrors of extreme thirst.

Writing about it afterwards, an army surgeon who was with the party, recorded that
the curious thing was that, even when the water had been found and the soldiers had
drunk of it freely, it took one or two days before they began to feel the effects of it.
He explained, that " when thirst takes a deep hold, it does not concern one organ
of the body only, but all the organs of the body."

This is also true with spiritual thirst.
D. L. Moody confessed, " For months, I had been hungering and thirsting for power in serving God.
I had come to such a state that I think I would have died if I had not got it."

That was a case of " spiritual dehydration."
Someone has said that the Christian is always thirsty, and always drinking.
Indeed, that is true.
Jesus said: " Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst." (John 4: 14)
It is also evident from the context that Jesus also meant " shall never thirst for anything else."

True followers of Jesus in a paradoxical position in that they are always thirsty,
and yet, always satisfied.
Someone has said of Christians: " They are satisfied with a dissatisfied satisfaction."
Figure that out.

Thirst is individual.
Salvation his individual.

If thirst is a condition of Jesus for our coming to Him for power, then it follows that
drinking will be the means of receiving.
So it is.
" Let him come to Me and drink." (John 7:37)
" We all were made to drink of one Spirit." (1 Corinthians 12:13)

Basically, for all its social implications and applications, Christianity is a private affair
-- as private as a drink!
Notice how often personal pronouns recur in Horatius Bonar's poetic record
of his spiritual experience.
" I came to Jesus, and I drank
Of that life-giving stream;
My thirst was quenched, my soul revived,
And now I live in Him."

Thirst is undeniably individual.
In a large foreign city a pastor was being given a tour of that great cities water-works.
He was told how many gallons of water a day was being filtered and purified
and chlorinated and supplied to that large city of Brisbane, Australia.

Then at one point on the tour, the man stopped and showed the pastor a plaque
on the wall of the central building.
" That tablet was erected to the memory of my father," he said proudly.
"He designed the dam, the pumping-station, filtering-beds and reservoir,
and thus gave Brisbane its water supply!"

How tremendous it is that we can say as a dry, thirsty world:
" My Father has provided a limitless supply."
Look for a moment at that supply which our Father has supplied.

First, the supply antedated the demand.
Long before there was a thirst there was water.
Before there was desire, there was a provision.
But for human need there was Divine anticipation of that need.

That is true here where we live.
Many years ago city fathers planned ahead and we have the water we need.
And many years ago God prepared for us and Jesus came and His Holy Spirit
already lives in your heart as a Christian.

Again, the supply is adequate to the demand.
D. L. Moody once told his hearers, " Don't be afraid to drink of the water of life freely.
There is plenty of it, and you can never use it all.
You might as well try to drink up the Mississippi River."

" More deep than the seas is that river,
More full than their manifold tides,
Where forever, and ever, and ever,
It flows, and abides."

So, drink as much as you wish.
There are no restrictions on your opportunities.
In the Holy Spirit infinite resources are at your disposal.

Further, the supply is appropriate to the demand.
When a person is desperately thirsty, what he wants most is not a lecture
on the chemistry of water; he wants the water itself.

As one preacher has said: " Analyzing tap water into H2 O quinces no one's thirst."
The need we have is in the water itself.
And fortunately, the very thing we need is available.
The supply is appropriate to the demand.

It is not just a theology of the Holy Spirit that Jesus offers: it is the Spirit Himself.
A theology of the Spirit has its own proper place, but our most urgent necessity is not
a systematic formulation of the doctrine of the third Person in the Trinity,
but our most urgent necessity is to be immersed in the Holy Spirit.

A person might perish with a text book on the chemistry of water -- open and in his hands.
It is not that he needs: it is water.
So those who desire to be filled with God's Spirit: don't be content with a theology
of the Spirit; for your soul's sake, seek the Spirit Himself.

Finally, the supply must be assimilated for the demand to be met.
Have you noticed, how, in the Biblical texts connected with this subject, coupled with
the offer of water, there is so often an invitation to come and get it?
" Ho, every one who thirsts, comes to the waters." (Isaiah 55: 1)

" If anyone thirst, let him come to Me and drink." (John 7: 37)

" Let him who is thirsty come, let him who desires take of the water of life
without price." (Revelation 22:17)

How do you acquire a spiritual thirst?
Just look at the fountain of water and the very sight will make you thirsty!

Sermon adapted by Dr. Harold L White