In this time of chaos and upheaval, the kind that gets your stomach all tied up in knots, the invitation to come to Jesus and experience rivers of living waters within, becomes all the more enticing.
Right before Jesus makes this profound statement in John 7, we read that his followers are departing from him and leaving him. John 7 starts with Jesus’s brothers being unsure of what to think about the brother they grew up with, no becoming God-like and doing miracles.
There is a huge festival taking place, and they want him to go and show the world what he is capable of. They challenge him to go viral. Jesus says, “no – my time has not yet come” because he hasn’t yet invented the internet.
His disciples go to the festival and leave Jesus at home.
The Showdown
At the festival, everyone is muttering about Jesus. Don’t you love that word? I do. I don’t nearly use it enough! There was much muttering about who he is, a good man, a deceiver, a demon-possed man, the Christ, or a prophet!
Jesus shows up at the festival and causes a big scene. He calls out the spiritual elite who have been devising a plot to kill him. The religious folks are hell-bent on holding others to high moral standards. Jesus tells them that none of them keep the law, which had to sting their pride.
They question Jesus’ authority, and he reveals their deception.
The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.
John 7:18
When I am working to establish and maintain my status, build my position, and seeking my own glory, I am deceiving myself. Self Deception happens when we have a problem, and we don’t know we have it, yet we point it out in everyone else.
Jesus then drops this line about how we deceive ourselves in the way we make judgments.
“Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”
John 7:24
Read that line again, or maybe a couple of times. Judge with right judgment, not by appearances. Vision is clouded; you don’t see accurately. Remember that when you are making judgments, and holding to them with all certainty.
The Revelation
Jesus makes a profound statement.
On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given because Jesus was not yet glorified.
John 7:37-39
To me, I wonder, what does this even mean? But to the Jews, who studied the Scriptures, especially the Prophet Isaiah, they know exactly what he said.
Isaiah, the Prophet, talks about life with the coming Messiah as wells of salvation (Isa 12:3), the Spirit as streams in a dry ground (Isa 44:3), and a spring whose waters never fail (Isa 58:11).
The most significant connection between the prophecy of Isaiah and Jesus’s claim to give living water to all those who come to him is:
Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat…
Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
Isaiah 55:1-3
Jesus is claiming to have abundant life. The kind of life that can’t be achieved by meeting moral standards, even if we could meet them. Not about seeking your own glory, receiving a gift. It will be a gift, freely given, and not based on your ability to meet standards
This only offended the religious elite even more!
Relating To Reality
After this, Jesus and the religious leaders retreat to their separate dens. The religious elite, who believe that they alone have the truth, resisted Jesus’s truth because it wasn’t there’s.
Nicodemus spoke up for Jesus, calling out their hypocrisy. He knew of their plot to kill Jesus and confronted them for not keeping their own laws without giving him a fair trial.
In doing so, Nicodemus risked his status, position, and reputation in his own tribe.
How I hold people to specific standards that I don’t meet is hypocrisy—pride interferes with our ability to reason and clouds right judgment.
With the encouragement of Michael Bungay Stanier, I have decided to stop judging myself for being judgmental. I am a judging machine, and there is no stopping it and no denying it!
We all judge things always. It is how we make sense of reality. We make judgments and then seek things out to validate and justify and prove them.
The problem is when we believe our judgments are TRUE FACTS. And then use these judgments as weapons, taking away the humanity of others.
Giving Up Our Own Glory
I am reflecting on an acquaintance who was incredibly generous to me. He recently retired as the CEO of a multi-billion dollar enterprise. He was one of the smartest, well-read and insightful guys I’ve come across.
He took a liking to me made time for me on multiple occasions over 3-4 years. There was nothing I could really offer him to pay him back. For some reason, I was always trying to out-do him, prove myself, or bring along novel ideas I though he hadn’t thought about.
On one occasion, he asked me about my youngest daughter by her first name. They had never met; he just remembered her name from a story I told him months earlier.
I can tell he cares about me. And it wasn’t just me, and he had a reputation for being this way.
As a white male, middle-aged, college-educated, shockingly handsome, I am aware that I have more than my fair share of undeserved privilege. Do I use it to fortify my position, or lower my status to elevate another?
When Nicomedes spoke up for Jesus, it cost him something. He put his reputation on the line.
The willingness to lower my status, not seek to glorify myself, is the challenge of a lifetime. This may be what Jesus meant by the words, take up your cross, and follow me.
What does it mean to die daily? I am not sure, but it is the only way to be resurrected.
John The Baptist was all about pointing to pointing people to Jesus. When he got a lot of attention he said that another was coming after him, whose shoes he was unworthy to tie, he must increase and I must decrease.
Jesus gave up his glory by laying down his life. We are invited to do likewise so that we can be raised with him.
Maybe it is not some great thing, like what Jesus did. Perhaps it can be small acts of kindness and acceptance like my CEO friend.
We have to give up something to receive something more. When we are thirsty, there is a spiritual need. We must acknowledge that we are in need to come to Him to be satisfied.
The opposite is acting like I have it all figured out and have it all together. I don’t; you don’t, and thinking you do or expects others to make you a hypocrite. It is having a problem you don’t know you have, or waiting for others to meet a standard you are unable to attend.
If you feel like you have fallen short of the glory of God, it is true. No need to feel terrible about it. Acknowledge it, and you can draw from the well.
There is an old Hymn that keeps running through my brain right now. We sang it as kids, and I don’t think I have thought about it in 25 years, yet I remember every word to the chorus.
Come to the water, you who are thirsty
Though you have nothing, I bid you come.
And be filled with the goodness
I have to offer.
Come, listen, live.
Reflection Question:
What are you drawing from the Living Waters these days?
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Surely God is my salvation;
I will trust and not be afraid.
The Lord, the Lord,
is my strength and my song;
he has become my salvation.
With joy you will draw water
from the wells of salvation.
Isaiah 12:2-3
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