Jesus Offers Satisfaction, Part 1

What are you most thirsty for today? Not your whole life, but just today. What are you most thirsty for? What do you wish? What are you hankering for? What do you long for?

To be satisfied is the feeling experienced when one’s wishes are met, when you are content, when you are delighted, when you are happy, when there is enjoyment, gladness, gratification. It’s just a moment and you relish the moment.

And the word “dissatisfied” means: not to be content, not happy, not pleased with something, not pleased with someone. To be dissatisfied is to be miserable, aggravated, gloomy, melancholy, despondent, restless, annoyed.

Jesus made an outrageous, outrageous promise to quench our thirst and to satisfy us at a very deep, deep level that would be completely independent of external things.

We will look at this a little bit later, but follow along as I read John chapter 7, “If anyone is thirsty, come and drink of Me.” And then in case you don’t know what that means, He’s going to say, “For everyone who believes,” to come to Him and to drink is to everyone who believes, who relies on, who depends on, who trusts in Me, “‘out of his innermost being will flow rivers, continuously, of living water,’ speaking of the Holy Spirit that would come,” and the intimate relationship of actually knowing God. Not knowing about God, but knowing and being connected deeply to Him.

Solomon was the wisest man in the world. And this is what he said, Proverbs chapter 2. I just, this desire for satisfaction, this thirst that you have, there is a way to quench it. And we are going to talk about how you can experience that.

Solomon would write, “My son, if you’ll receive my words and treasure my commandments within you, make your ear attentive to wisdom, and incline your heart to understanding.”

Then notice verses 3 and 4, he talks about a passion, a commitment, a desire, a thirst. “If you cry out for discernment, lift your voice for understanding.” Literally, pray! Ask! Come after it! If you seek for her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasure,” then here is the result, “then you will discern the fear of the Lord, who He really is, and you’ll discover the knowledge of God.”

Now get this, “you’ll discover,” this isn’t knowing about God. This isn’t like you would have a textbook and say, “This is what God is like.” This is like you would actually meet and experience. Jesus, at the last night that He lived, He said, “This is eternal life, that you might know Him,” experientially, “and His Son, whom He has sent,” speaking of Himself, “for God gives wisdom.” He gives this skill, this ability, to know how to live in such a way to quench the deepest thirst of your life.

Now, turn the page if you will. And I want to talk about, How do you get that wisdom? Literally, how to unearth spiritual wisdom from God’s Word. And here’s what I want you to get.

Solomon said you’ve got to dig, you’ve got to search, you’ve got to seek, you’ve got to treasure, you’ve got to cry out. There is a wisdom that leads to quenching the deepest thirst of our lives, and it comes out of God’s Word, but it’s not just on top of the ground. You’ve got to dig. There has to be a passionate pursuit.

God wants to know, Do you really want to know Me? And here’s my experience, I believe most Christians don’t know how to get into this written Word so the Spirit of the Living God begins to speak very personally and passionately and clearly to give you the wisdom to, not just address big problems, but to be on a path that you were made to be on, to do what He made you to do, to bring the greatest joy and the greatest peace in your life.

And so, what I am going to suggest is there is a truth here. And the truth is that the Spirit gives life, the flesh counts for nothing. And then underline this: “The words I have spoken to you,” and then circle the word: “are Spirit and they are life.”

Jesus said, “The actual words,” they are written down now, but His actual words, the words of the New Testament, they are Spirit and they are life.

I want to give you tools and teach you how to actually open and study the Bible, where you can learn it as well or better than me.

Early on, when I read it, I couldn’t understand much of it.

I want you to know you can. And it’s the key to quenching your deepest thirst.

Three tools.

Tool number one is context. As you read through the Bible, the context. In other words, what informs this passage? We are going to read in just a minute that Jesus goes during this time, He has been out. The context is He has been out in a rural area, because they are seeking to take His life.

The timing is it is six months before the crucifixion. His popularity was blown out of the doors, then He set the bar and said, “If you’re really going to follow Me, you need to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Me.” And a great many of His disciples said, “We are not going to follow anymore.”

And so there is this big feast. It’s called The Feast of Tabernacles. And the context of this, I want to give it to you just before we read it. The context is, is there are three great feasts in the Old Testament, the Jewish Law. This was the happy one.

It was called the Feast of Tabernacles, because what it was is, remember they were delivered from Egypt, crossed the Red Sea, then they are in the wilderness, it’s really desert.

And God, there was a cloud by day and a fire by night. So He guided them, He provided the manna or the food. They ran out of water; there was water out of the rock. He did all these miracles. And, yet, when He gave them a chance to go into the Promised Land, remember? They wouldn’t believe.

This is really important because of what is going to happen. And then when they finally would believe, actually, the whole generation, it took forty years. They die. And then those who were under twenty and above, they go into the Promised Land, the Jordan parts, there is Jericho. It’s this formidable city. They walk around it seven times for seven days.

And then they shout according to what God says, because He wanted them to know He is going to be the victor, not them. The walls crumble, and you have this amazing land of milk and honey and promise and vineyards that you didn’t plant and houses and so God, the Promised Land becomes a reality.

After that happened, the Feast of Tabernacles is you would go and gets some sticks and some leaves, and you would make a little lean-to and the roofs were flat back then. You would do it on your roof, they did it in the streets, they did it in the courtyards of the temple.

And if you were twenty years old and older, as a male, and you lived within fifteen miles, you had to, it was an obligation, to come to this feast in downtown Jerusalem. So here is the picture. There are all these sticks and all these people. The kids are going, “We camp out for seven days! This is great.” Okay?

Thousands of people come, and it’s also, it’s often called the Feast of Ingathering. So the grapes, first, are coming in. The wheat had just come in. The fruit trees, everything is blooming. So there is music, there is food, it’s seven days, it’s a party, they are celebrating. Remember our forty years in the desert? We are remembering God did this and He brought us! We have the Promised Land! And remember there was water that came out of the rock? And it’s just seven days of this.

And then on the seventh day, this would be really important, the chief priest, or at least one of the head priests would take a golden vessel and there would be a parade and he would go down to the Pool of Siloam, right in Jerusalem, and he would fill it with water, and they would follow him, and then he would come back and he would walk around the altar seven times, and then he would take the water and he would pour it out, reminding them that God gave water out of the rock to end the big celebration.

Now, in your mind, remember this. Here’s what happened. On the last day of the feast, right after that happened, okay? They are remembering, Promised Land, all that God did, okay? Jesus steps up. The water has been poured on the altar. Everyone is remembering on the memorial of what God has done.

And when it says, “a loud voice,” the literal word is: “He cries out!” “If any man thirsts, let him come and drink of Me! For whoever believes in Me, relies on Me, trusts Me, follows Me, out of his innermost being will continually flow living water.”

So you got the context? Okay, let’s read it. And what I want to do is I just want to give you, let’s read just the first thirteen verses, because I want you to now, with that in your mind, think about what was happening. Chapter 7, verse 1.

“After this,” after what? After He fed five thousand, and many of the disciples aren’t following Him, but Peter and His disciples said, “Lord, where would we go? You’ve got the words of eternal life. We are in. We are all in.”

“After this Jesus went around in Galilee, purposefully staying away from Judea, because the Jews were waiting to take His life. But when the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles,” that I just described, “was near, Jesus’ brothers said to Him, ‘You ought to leave and go to Judea, so that Your disciples may see the miracles that You do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show Yourself to the world.’ For even His own brothers did not believe in Him.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but could we pause for just a minute? If you had a brother in your family who you really cared about, and you knew that they were trying to kill him in Jerusalem, I’m not sure the most loving, kind thing you have ever done is, “Hey, you’re doing these miracles. If you really think you’ve got it all together why don’t you go do a few miracles…?”

So the first group who doesn’t believe are the people who have grown up with Him, His own brothers. “Therefore, Jesus told them, ‘The right time,’” literally, the word for time here is opportunity. “‘The right time for Me has not yet come, for anytime is right for you. The world cannot hate you, but the world hates Me because I testify that what the world does is evil. You go to the feast, I’m not yet going up to the feast, because for Me, the right time has not yet come.’ Having said this, He stayed in Galilee.” So His brothers go.

“However, after His brothers had left for the feast, He went also, not publicly but in secret. Now, at the feast, the Jews were watching for Him, and asking, ‘Where is that man?’ Among the crowds, there was widespread murmuring.” It’s actually the exact, same word used in the Old Testament when they were getting ticked off with God and things weren’t going their way, so the people murmured.

“Some said, ‘He is a good man,’ others said, ‘No, He deceives the people.’ But no one would say anything publicly about Him for fear of the Jews.” If you said Jesus was a good man or the Messiah, you would get kicked out of the synagogue, and you’re gone and you’re alienated.

Now, do you have the context? You’ve got the idea of what is happening here? Let me tell you why this is so important. If, and, again, please hear, all I am saying is I love you. I want to help you.

If your routine is, I read a little devotional and I read a couple of verses and I read “The Daily Bread,” or I go on YouVersion and I read a little something here and something there. And I do it maybe once a week, maybe twice a week. And I don’t really know what is going on but I want to get a little nugget for the day, you’re never going to have streams of living water coming out of your heart and life.

You’ve got to know what it says.

Now, let me tell you something, because some of you are saying, Well, Chip, where do you get all that stuff about the tabernacle? Well, where do you get stuff about your technical area? Books, right?

The first one I started with is this is called The Daily Walk Bible. It has an overview of every book, it has the background of every book, you don’t have to stay right on track, but you read through the Bible. Every year I did it for the first fifteen years I was a Christian. And it gave a background and a context, so that a thinking person who didn’t grow up in a Hebrew culture or the New Testament times, you can actually do it.

The second thing is content. And by content, this is what I mean, is, what is the basic flow of information? Just the basic flow.

Here’s what I want you to know, if you want God to speak to you, when you are looking through a chapter or a section, just get the quick overview. Like this chapter 7, I just read it, probably, five, six, seven times. Quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly.

Because I just wanted to get the big picture before I started trying to ask, Okay, that’s what it says, but what does it mean? You’ve got to know what it actually says. I took three or four pages on a yellow sheet of paper. Just, what does it say?

And so I gave you my notes. So what you find is Jesus goes to the feast, verses 1 through 13, right? We just read that. Second, Jesus teaches in the temple, verses 14 to 21. And I am going to walk through it in just a second. But just an overview.

He goes to the temple and He teaches. And when He teaches, there are two responses. The Jewish leaders go, “Wow,” in fact, go ahead and look in your Bible. Look at 14, 15. The Jewish leaders go, “Where did this guy learn this? He’s an expert in the Law, He is an amazing communicator, He has all this authority, but He didn’t go to any of our seminaries.”

And so, what Jesus is, since the issue is His identity, Jesus says to them, “If any man is willing to do My will He’ll know the teaching, whether I speak for myself or from God.”

And so, then what He says to them is that, “You can’t hear Me, you can’t hear God’s voice because you don’t obey the Law. You’re not obedient.” And then He says, “You don’t even obey Moses,” He is speaking to religious leaders who think Moses is the greatest person in the whole world. But Moses said – what? “Thou shall not murder.”

And their heart had already determined that they were going to murder Him. No trial; no justification.

And so, what He is saying to them is that, “I come from above. My authority is from God who sent Me.” And so, what you need to know is He goes to the feast, He speaks, they are amazed, and when He says this, “You’re trying to kill Me,” well, some of the crowd isn’t in on it.

So actually, look down at about verse 20. They said, “You are demon possessed! Where are You getting this idea that they are trying to kill You? You’re wacko, man!”

And so, He becomes, out of this, a real controversy during this feast.

Then Jesus defends Himself, look at verse 21. He said, “I did one miracle, and yet you are all astonished? Yet because Moses gave you circumcision (though it actually wasn’t Moses, it was the patriarchs – Abraham and Isaac and Jacob),” He said, “If you have a kid that on the eighth day is when the Law demands that you circumcise your son, if that happens on the Sabbath, you circumcise him.”

And, yet, here is a guy, remember in the Pool of Siloam? Thirty-eight years he is an invalid. “I don’t just obey the Law, I heal him and you guys are uptight and angry because he is walking with a little mat instead of rejoicing in God, actually the whole point of the Sabbath was a gift to you. It wasn’t some rigid, legalistic thing.”

And so, He corrects. And then notice what He says to them, look at verse 24, “Stop judging by mere appearance, and make a right judgment.” Basically He says, “You guys don’t get it. You are so off, you just take your little view and your lens of the Scripture and the truth and you have missed the heart of God.”

And then notice after that, then He is this big point of controversy. So look at verse 25. “At this point, some of the people in Jerusalem began to ask, ‘Well, wait a second. Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill, and yet He is speaking publicly, and no one is trying to get Him.’”

So they are going, “So maybe, maybe the Pharisees really think He is the Messiah.” But then they say, “Well, we’re not sure because when the Messiah comes, no one will know where He is from.” That was a rabbinic tradition. The rabbis would say there are three mysterious things, in other words, that come out of the blue. The Messiah is one thing. This is in the oral tradition. A godsend, in other words, you get some money or something happens, it just comes out of the blue. And the third is a scorpion.

And their point was, I remember camping one time and I had a sleeping bag and I opened it up and there was a scorpion and it was like, Ooh, I didn’t expect that. It came out of nowhere.

Their point was that no one would ever know where the Messiah comes from. Well, the Bible didn’t teach that.

And so, they are rejecting Him based on tradition instead of the truth. And so, the people were getting a little uptight because some of them were saying, “Well, maybe He really is.” So look at verse 30. “At this, they tried to seize Him,” literally the word is, “to arrest Him,” but no one lays a hand on Him, but He is the center of controversy now.

They said, “When Christ comes, will He do more miracles than this One did?” So some people, look at this, verse 31, “many put their faith in Him.”

Well now the Pharisees respond. And so, He is in the controversy, the Pharisees say, “Well, wait, we have a problem here. He has done these miracles, He has had this popularity, now He is here right in the middle of the feast and, man, we have got to get rid of this guy. And some people are believing in Him.”

And so, they send the temple guards, verse 32, to arrest Him. “Jesus said, ‘I am only here for a short time,’” and now in the next few verses, He is going to give a veiled expression of the resurrection that is going to come.

And go ahead, you can scan the verses, the next three or four verses there, verses 33 through about 36. And He goes, “I am going to go to a place, and where I go you can’t come.”

And, of course, they don’t get it. They just listen literally, So are you going to go preach to the Greeks? Are you going to go to the Gentiles? And He keeps repeating, “No, where I’m going you can’t come. You can’t come, because I am going to the Father, and you don’t believe because you have rejected Me.”