Thirst No More

Good morning Blue Oaks.

How many of you have kids in school, would you raise your hand? From preschool — Phd-school.

I have 3:

A 19-year-old who’s a junior at UCLA.
A 15 year old who’s a sophomore at Foothill.
A 14-year-old who’s a freshman at Barca Residency Academy in Arizona.

When we have kids in school, our lives revolve around the academic year.

I’d like to ask you to do something if you would. It’s totally voluntary. Would you turn to the person next to you and tell them how the start of the school year has been for you?

On a scale from zero to ten, ten being fabulous and zero being… zero, what kind of start has it been for you — these last few weeks?

If you don’t have kids in school just make something up.

Alright, I’m going to ask that you stop that conversation right now. You can continue it later if you want.

Would you open your bible or the Blue Oaks app, so you can follow along today? We’ll be in the Gospel of John. We’ll read there in just a minute.

The writers of Scripture describe — and even promise — what life can look like for people who follow Jesus.

These descriptions are often quite extraordinary, but they’re presented as things we really ought to expect — that we ought to think are possible for ordinary people like you and me.

One of the most extraordinary statements in this regard is in John 7.

John 7 takes place in Jerusalem during a big feast, the Feast of Tabernacles, that commemorated God’s presence with his people.

Jesus shows up unexpectedly at this feast and becomes the center of quite a lot of controversy because he makes an extraordinary statement.

We’re used to thinking of Jesus as this extraordinary person, as the Son of God on earth. Imagine a religious festival with ordinary people and what looks like an ordinary man, flesh and blood, standing in the midst of a group of people and making this claim.

On the last and greatest day of the festival, (The Feast of Tabernacles) — the feast that commemorates God dwelling with his people — Jesus stood and said in a loud voice — in a loud voice because he wants everyone to hear this — “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.

What Jesus means by ‘thirsty’ is:

anyone who has unsatisfied desires
anyone who feels restless
anyone who feels discontent about anything at all

It doesn’t necessarily mean you have deep spiritual longings.

“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. (John 7:37-38)

Let anyone who is:

Dissatisfied
Unhappy
Discontent
Who hasn’t had a great start to the school year
Who hasn’t had a great start to their career
Who hasn’t had a great start to their marriage

Let them come to me.

Then Jesus says — those who do will have rivers of living water flowing from within them.

The old King James Version translates it — “Out of his belly will flow rivers of living water.”

The belly has become a real important part of the body in our day. To have a strong core is the key to health and fitness.

Jesus uses the word ‘koilia’ — out of your “belly”

The core of your being.
That place that gets all tied up in knots when you’re anxious or afraid.
That place where the butterflies fly when things aren’t going well.
That place that feels empty or hollow when you’re dissatisfied or unhappy or feeling alone.

Jesus says anyone who’s discontent — that’s the only criteria. Anybody who’s unhappy, dissatisfied, and comes to me and trusts me and begins to follow me — right down in your core, you will be flowing with energy, hope, love, and power — rivers of living water.

What does he say this river of living water stands for?

Look at verse 39.

By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. (John 7:39)

This new kind of life is tied to the presence and work of the Holy Spirit… who is in you who believe, Jesus says.

Look at John 10.

Jesus is teaching, and he uses another picture but describes the same reality. Here he uses a picture of a shepherd and some sheep. He says:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they — my people, my sheep, anyone who comes to me — may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10)

Have it with abundance, he says.

In this passage, who does the thief represent?

Satan, the Evil One.

In other words, Jesus says we ought to expect some opposition.

This life is not without challenge or without barrier… because there is a thief who wants to rob us of it.

If you turn to any book in the New Testament, you’ll see this picture of an amazing life offered through Jesus by the Spirit.

Let me give you one example from 1 Peter. Peter says to the people he’s writing to:

Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:8)

He says of the people to whom he’s writing:

You have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other. (1 Peter 1:22)

A community of sincere and authentic love; no faking.

He said they are ridding themselves of malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander. These are drying up and disappearing from their lives.

He said they have humbled themselves under God’s mighty hand.

Now how many of you here would say this pretty much describes you? That you are filled with inexpressible joy?

Do other people comment on this about you from time to time — that you are ridding yourself from malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander?

When people are around you, do they notice your core is flowing with rivers of living water and you have more or less mastered humility?

How many of you have done that?

I’ll tell you what I think happens. I think a lot of people hear the teachings of Jesus — they hear the gospel.

They’re overwhelmed by this vision and this hope, the beauty of it.

And they say yes to it.

And for a time, there’s a kind of a spiritual honeymoon period:

They’re filled with love for God.
They’re drawn toward the Bible.
They want to tell other people about Jesus.
They love to worship.
And some things change.
Maybe their coarse language gets cleaned up.
Maybe certain addictions get overcome.
Maybe they get involved in serving or something.

But over time this sense of progress, this sense of growth and change, kind of stalls out.

And instead of my life looking like this amazing picture painted in the New Testament, my life looks different.

I yell at my children whom I love.
I worry too much about money or my job.
I get jealous of people for stupid, petty reasons… because I think they’re more successful than me or more attractive than me.
I use deception to get out of trouble or to get what I want.
I pass judgment on people so easily, so casually, so arrogantly.
My devotional life, my prayer life, is kind of up and down.

When that happens for someone, when they read the kind of words from the New Testament that we’ve just read — putting off the old nature, becoming a new person — often instead of feeling inspired by these words, they just feel discouraged or guilty or confused or just tired.

And they’re stuck with this gap.

There is a life that is promised; and it’s a life of such goodness and beauty and energy and joy that it’s captivated the human race for two thousand years.

But then there’s reality. And the reality of my life is it doesn’t look like that.

In between the reality and the promise is this gap.

Now here’s the question: What do people do when over time they’re not closing this gap anymore?

What do people do when they want to be sincere followers of Jesus and they’re involved in a church, but there seems to be a gap between reality and promise and it’s not getting smaller?

I want to talk about that a bit because there are real strategies in real people’s lives that deal with this gap.

But this is what a lot of people do.

A lot of people say they’ve got to try harder. They think to themselves — the problem is they’re just not being heroic enough in their spiritual effort.

I’ll tell you frankly, I see this in a lot of people. “I’ll close the gap,” they’ll think, “by sheer spiritual elbow grease.”

I’ll get up earlier.
I’ll pray longer.
I’ll read another book.
I’ll listen to another message.
I’ll learn new disciplines.
I’ll serve more.
I’ll work harder.
I’ll try to be nicer to people in my life.

You hear about someone who gets up at four o’clock in the morning to pray and you feel guilty because you think you don’t pray enough, so you resolve to do that too — even though you’re not a morning person.

Even though at four o’clock you’re dazed and confused and groggy and grumpy and no one wants to be around you then.

Not even Jesus wants to be with you at four o’clock in the morning.

But you say to yourself, “Well, this is hard, exhausting, and miserable so it must be God’s will for my life. It must be spiritual. It must be good for me.”

You keep it up for several days or weeks or even months, but not forever. You can’t sustain it.

Inevitably you stop. And when you stop, you feel guilty. And that guilt keeps growing until eventually you start doing something else.

And there’s this cycle that you’re in over and over and over again.

Your secret is that you’re getting tired, and I don’t mean just physically tired. I mean you’re weary in your soul. You’re weary and you’re afraid that the gap is never going to close.

It was to just such people that Jesus said:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28)

He was not talking to people who were just stressed out by life… or who have too many assignments at school or too many tasks to do in their work.

He was talking to people who were oppressed and exhausted by a system of spiritual effort.

He’s saying, “All of you who are weary, come to me and I will give you rest.”

The truth is these are confusing words to some people because for some coming to Jesus is just exhausting.

Some people, when faced with this gap, just pretend like it’s not really there.

They know they’re supposed to be different.
They know what the promised life looks like… and so they decide they’ll just kind of fake it.

When you talk to these people, it’s kind of sad or discouraging or odd sometimes.

When they talk to you, their life is like a miracle a minute.

They smile a lot.
Every prayer gets answered.
Every decision is a word from God.
Every sentence ends with “Praise the Lord.”
They get real good at impression management.

I know of one woman who falls into this category. This is a true story.

Her son was depressed, but that violated the family image because it’s a happy family.

She told him one morning to smile and he said, “No,” because he was depressed.

She said, “Smile anyway. Fake happiness is better than genuine depression.”

She was saying to him — fake happiness is better than reality.

We live in this kind of weird subculture that in some ways teaches people to pretend.

We know we aspire to life that’s a higher kind of life. And oftentimes the church subculture teaches people that if you’re not there, pretend.

I read the most fascinating book a while ago. It was written by an anthropologist. He’s not a Christian, not a believer, not a Christ-follower; but he spent about a year observing a campus ministry — a group of Christians.

It’s so interesting to see this from a different set of eyes, an anthropologist’s eyes.

He said there were certain things within that group that just became accepted practices.

For instance when they prayed, they would use the word ‘just’ all the time in their prayers.

Have you ever noticed people doing this?

“Dear Lord, I JUST want to ask…

No one teaches that, but he said it’s kind of an attempt to try to sound more humble than you really are. This is all I want — I just want this.

He said another thing they would do when they prayed, they would often take deep breathes during their prayer.

Do you ever notice that?

“Dear Lord… (breathe) I just want (breathe).

Ever notice that kind of a deal?

I don’t know if you ever do that, but this anthropologist said it’s an attempt to make it sound like there’s a lot of emotion going on.

I know with God I ought to have a deep emotional connection to him, so I’ll try to find ways to make it sound like that’s going on.

Of course, that kind of thing is often exaggerated by people who lead in churches or do public things.

Any of us who do that kind of thing will be tempted to make it sound like there’s more urgency, more emotion, more something.

In a sense, precisely because we really try to take seriously aspiring to this promised kind of life, we could create a culture where people learn how to pretend… and sometimes they don’t even know they’re doing it.

People outside the church smell it. And it seems really odd and unattractive.

Another thing some people do — they keep switching spiritual venues. They change churches, traditions, or denominations.

I have seen this hundreds of times now.

Someone grows up in a non-charismatic church and they say to themselves, “You know, if I just went to a charismatic church where they took a different approach to prayer or healing or tongues or worship or something… if I just went to that kind of church, that would close the gap.”

Someone else grows up in a charismatic church and they say to themselves, “You know, things here are so experience-oriented and shallow. If I just went to a church that has some deep theology.” And they go to a church where they get filled up with theological information.

People go to a church that takes some particular approach to teaching or evangelism or sacraments or social action. They think if they just went to another kind of church.

One of the things Paul says is we have this treasure of the gospel in jars of clay.

It comes in and with and through human beings in human communities. In a sense, every church in every denomination is part of that jar.

Some of them have robes.
Some of them use incense.

There are all different kinds of jars, but often what happens for people is they think, “If I just switch jars; if I just had another jar…”

I’m telling you, when you stand back sometimes it’s like watching a game of musical chairs… but it doesn’t close the gap.

So eventually, some people just give up… because after awhile that gap is just too painful.

When they read the words that we’ve read today or hear someone teach about it, inside they feel discouraged or hopeless. Inwardly they decide that such a different way of life is really not possible.

Now they generally don’t say that to anyone else. They may not even admit it to themselves.

They remain a Christian.
They keep going to church maybe.
They maintain their involvement in the church.
They sure hope that they’re going to go to heaven when they die.

But they’ve decided that not much can be done about that gap in this life, and secretly they just give up.

And the truth is, some of you are just about there.

But what if there’s another way?
What if Jesus was right?
What if he really meant what he said about rivers of living water flowing out of the belly, the core of your being?
What if he meant it and he really did know what he was talking about?
What if such a life really was possible?
What if it was possible for you to become increasingly, authentically, no-faking, alive with love and joy and truth and peace and courage?

And it’s not by trying harder. It’s not by trying to rev yourself up into fits of emotion and deeper levels of commitment.

I want to read a few other verses that speak of the same reality. They all talk about who it is at work to bridge the gap… between reality and the promised life.

Listen closely to these verses. Listen to who the writers of Scripture say is at work.

Paul writes:

Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion. (Philippians 1:6)

Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Philippians 2:12)

Paul, again to the Church of Corinth:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)

This kind of thing happens a lot. Many people, when they’re presented with the gospel, think, “Well, God is up there somewhere; but I’m down here with sin. And there’s this huge gap.”

This is another question I want to ask you to answer:

Can effort bridge this gap?

No.

We talk about this all the time. Only God can get us from one side to the other.

It’s easy for us to think that effort can bridge the gap; but effort by itself — unaided human effort — cannot bridge this gap.

This gap can only be bridged by one thing — and that’s grace.

And grace is generally experienced in the Christian life as power.

When you’re exploring faith and you want to begin a relationship with God, you first of all, experience grace in God’s mercy and forgiveness.

Then when you’re living life as a Christ follower, you experience God’s grace primarily as power.

Dallas Willard, in his book Renovation of the Heart, writes about this.

He says there’s this illusion that saints don’t need much grace because they don’t sin much.

Dallas says it’s just the other way around. Great saints burn more grace than anyone else.

Saints burn more grace than anyone else because that’s what they live on, that’s what they’re running on. That’s their fuel.

The picture Jesus uses for life in the Spirit, as we read in John, is of a river. He talks about rivers of living water.

Words for river or stream are used over 150 times in the Bible. Often they’re a picture of spiritual life…

And for good reason. Israel was a desert.

It didn’t have rivers like we think of the Sacramento and Russian rivers in Northern California.

It had wadis. Wadis are just gullies, troughs that run through the sand.

After a rainstorm they would be filled with water, but usually they’re just dry ravines.

Israel understood a river is grace.
A river is a gift.
A full river is life.

A dry ravine, a wadi, that’s death.

We don’t know too much about what the Garden of Eden looked like, but one thing we know is that a river ran through it. The very opening account in Genesis 2:10 says, “A river watering the garden flowed from Eden.”

Now you start to understand why that would have meant so much to the people who read the Bible.

The writers of Scripture use this image as a picture of spiritual reality, not a metaphor, but reality that there is in this world a river of living water that flows — that God’s presence and God’s power give that kind of life.

In Psalm 46 the psalmist says:

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God. (Psalm 46:4)

Israel is essentially a country without rivers.

There’s the Jordan River, which at times was kind of a trickle… and is at the border.

For Israel itself, there’s no river in the city of Jerusalem. They had to bring in water by an aqueduct.

“There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God.”

If a river flows unobstructed, all kinds of good things will happen.

It will nourish trees.
It will provide a home for fish and plants.
It will give drinking water to human beings.
They can drink and cleanse and grow crops.

Drawing images like this are very familiar to the readers of Scripture.

This is from Jeremiah 17:

But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit. (Jeremiah 17:7-8)

When a river flows, that’s life. If a river gets dammed up, if it gets blocked, obstructed, polluted, cut off, that’s death.

The river is life. The river is grace.

This picture is so central to spiritual life.

What if the Spirit of God is like a river and is flowing all the time?

What if your job as a believer in Jesus is not to try harder
or run faster
or get up earlier
or rev up your emotions
or pretend like everything is okay
or keep hopping from one place to another

What if God really is at work in every moment, in every place?

Abraham Piper, a theologian, put it like this. I’m paraphrasing a little bit, but he said: There is not an inch in space or a moment in time about which Jesus Christ does not say, “This is mine, this is mine, this is mine.”

He says there’s nowhere you can go where the river doesn’t flow.

So what if God is at work in every moment, in every place, and your job is just to jump in the river?

Your job is to figure out from one moment to the next just this: How do I drink from the rivers of living water that flow?

How do I NOT do those things that close me off to the Spirit?

How do I keep myself aware and submitted so that those rivers of living water are flowing through my belly, through the core of my being?

How do I learn to walk in the Spirit and live in the flow of the Spirit?

I was thinking this week about a single command that the apostle Paul gives.

If you could learn to keep this one command, just this one, if you could just learn to master this one command, you could pretty much live the life Jesus would have you live — the life he lived that he describes. It’s from 1 Thessalonians 5.

Do not quench the Spirit. (1 Thessalonians 5:19)

Remember that one.

You see, the Spirit is already at work in you. Jesus says if you’ve come to him, if you’re a follower of his, the Spirit is there.

A lot of times we don’t recognize it. A lot of times we think, No, maybe he’s there with someone who’s famous or someone who really counts, like pastors and missionaries — people like that.

No, Jesus says the Spirit is already there. He’s bigger than you; he’s stronger than you; he’s more patient with your failures and your gaps and your inadequacies and your pretending.

He’s more patient about that stuff than you are, and he’s committed to helping you 24/7.

So Paul says, in a sense, your only job is just don’t get in his way. Just don’t quench the Spirit.

A lot of Paul’s teachings use this kind of language.

It’s like this:

We’re either doing things that are opening ourselves up to the Spirit’s influence in our lives — Paul talks about this in terms of “walking in the Spirit” or “keeping in step with the Spirit.”

Or we do things that close ourselves off to the Spirit — Paul talks about this in terms like, “don’t quench the Spirit,” “don’t grieve the Spirit.”

I’ll give you an example, a painfully simple example.

Earlier this week I was at a gas station. And I was in a hurry to get to work because I missed a whole day of work on Monday because of the holiday, so I had one less day to get this message prepared.

At the gas station, there was a man in another lane who was leaving. The right of way in gas stations is not always terribly clear. We were both leaving, and he cut in front of me.

I felt a surge of anger that shocked me. I mean it was so strong. He looked me right in the face, and I looked at him. There was so much hostility in his face and so much in mine, too. I could feel it.

He gestured at me and I gestured back. I used a different finger than he did because I’m a pastor.

With my body, I was using one finger; but in my heart, I was using the other finger.

I’m thinking to myself in this moment, “Get out of my way. Don’t you know I have to get to my office and write a message about how to flow with the Spirit every moment of your life?”

I pulled into the street. I could feel it in my body, from the little exchange of those few seconds, I had extinguished any kind of sensitivity to the Spirit’s presence or guidance in my mind, or in my body. It was just shut off.

I had, at least for those several seconds, completely closed myself to the Spirit in my life. I was out of the river. I was in a dry ravine.

This is a very important thing. In one sense, the Spirit is the shyest and gentlest person, because he will almost never override your choice to close him out.

There are rare violations of this.

There are occasions in Scripture where God needs to get something done through some person, and he chooses to do it by divine, sovereign power, so he overrides whatever might have been going on in that person’s mind or will.

That’s a very great exception for very good reasons.

God wants to transform us in a way that involves us, a way in which we say yes from our hearts.

But the Spirit will allow us to quench him, to grieve him. That’s what I did.

For those few seconds, I was in the desert.

But then all I had to do is say, “God, I’m sorry. I don’t want that life. Forgive me. I’ll be open. I want to be open. I want your kind of life.”

And just like that, I’m back in the river.

So you don’t have to beat yourself up when you mess up. You can get right back in. That’s grace.

Here’s the deal: we can learn how to drink deeply from the rivers of living water that flow.

We can learn — what are the things that I tend to do that close me off to the Spirit, that quench the Spirit?

What are the things that I do that open me up to the Spirit, help me walk in the Spirit, keep in step with the Spirit?

What can I really expect if I’m drinking deeply from the rivers of living water that flow within me?

What can I really expect in my job
in my neighborhood
when I’m in the car
when I’m with my family or roommates — people that I live with
when I’m at school
when I’ve got problems
What can I expect?

And I want to encourage you to be open to the Spirit as you leave this room today. You can say, “God, if there’s something you want me to do while I’m walking out of this room — if you want me to greet someone or hug someone or encourage someone. If you want me to pray for someone, God, I’m open to you.

We don’t have to just leave. We can all walk in the Spirit as we walk out of this place. We really can.

I’m so deeply committed to this because we’re part of such an amazing church.

It would be unspeakably sad if…

we reach so many unchurched people in this community
we baptized people
we put on fabulous services
we run tremendous programs for kids and students

But we did it with people who were tired and dry and empty and lonely. That would be unspeakably sad… so let’s walk in the Spirit.

Alright, let me pray as the worship team comes to lead us in a closing song.