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I'd like to invite you to open up your Bibles to John chapter 7. You know, there are probably few doctrines today that handle this poorly as the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. When we think of His person and His work and we watch what is said and what is believed and what is done in His name, it's pretty amazing.
He is spoken of as a force by some false teachers, some so-called teachers and preachers. They wave their hands or their sports coats. I feel like taking my sports coat off my jacket and just waving it around, throwing the Holy Spirit around.
I'm not going to do that because that is wrong. But they whip it around like they're throwing a frisbee or something. That's how they treat Him, the Holy Spirit. Thank you. They'll refer to certain teaching or preaching or singing or a book or almost anything as the anointing.
And then they'll talk about it as if they can just pass the anointing from one person on to another. Again, wrong. Some people teach or say that the Holy Spirit causes Christians to lose control of their tongues, of their bodies, and even of the contents of their stomach.
Yes, there's vomiting in the Spirit, allegedly. Holy Spirit causes people to flop around, bark. Where do these ideas come from? Well, one thing is certain. They don't come from the Bible. They don't come from the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.
They don't come from anywhere in the New Testament. They're just add-ons. They're false teaching. Tonight, I'm not going to give you a total corrective on that, but we are going to see the Lord Jesus Christ speak of the Spirit, and He doesn't talk about anything like this.
And when John adds to it, he doesn't add anything like that to it. Let's look at our text, John chapter 7, verses 37 to 39. We're going to set up the, as we develop this this evening, we're going to set up the kind of the setting, and we're going to walk through this whole passage here.
On the last day of the feast, that is to say, the feast of tabernacles, of booths, 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 he said, 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. Now to just kind of catch us up to where we are in the book of John.
We know that the Gospel of John was written about 90 AD. It's written by the man who calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved. That's a great title, right? The disciple whom Jesus loved, but it's also self-effacing because he didn't put his own name in there.
He doesn't speak about himself. He just kind of in a self-deprecating way, he refers to himself as the disciple Jesus loved. And he wrote his Gospel long after the other ones were written, and he uniquely focused, he zeroed in on the deity of Christ.
In fact, he tells us in John 20, 31, that that's the purpose of writing this entire book. He wanted the readers to believe in the deity of Jesus Christ, that he is fully God, that he's the Son of God, because belief in that is equated with eternal life.
His Gospel is filled with vignettes, with scenes that really highlight the claims of Jesus to be God, and that demonstrate him to be the eternal second person of the Trinity. Now in John chapter 6, Jesus fed the multitudes with just five small loaves of bread and two fish.
And if you recall, the crowd wanted to basically march him down to Jerusalem, just take the city by force, as it were, and stall him on the throne, kick the Romans out, and start living the kingdom life right then.
And knowing this, he avoided them. I mean, what they wanted was free food, free lunch, free dinner, free breakfast, free everything. But knowing this, he avoided them, sent his disciples off across the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum.
But before they made it across, what happened? Well, first, a big storm. They're getting tossed about. These guys knew how to sail. They knew how to handle a boat. Most of them were fishermen. But they're terrified.
And then in the midst of all the tumult and the waves and the wind, Jesus comes walking across the Sea of Galilee. Now, for them, instead of thinking, great, of course, we know from the other gospel accounts, they thought they were seeing a ghost.
They were terrified. And Jesus says, it's me. And Peter wants to come out, and then Peter sinks. We know that he then exhibits his mastery over creation by telling the waves to be still. And everything stops.
And immediately, they are on the shore over on the other side in Capernaum. The multitude that they've left behind soon find him, and they engage him in a conversation. And this conversation throughout chapter 6 ultimately winds up with Jesus having almost no followers, just the 12.
Everybody else is gone. And even then, he asks them, and Peter responds, but he asks them, do you guys want to leave also? And Peter says, you know, to whom would we go? You alone have the words of eternal life.
And in chapter 7, Jesus' unbelieving brothers, they're getting ready to go down to Jerusalem from Galilee. Why? Because it's that time of the year. It's the biggest party. It's the biggest festival. It's the Feast of Booths, the Feast of Tabernacles, where they celebrate God's faithfulness to the nation of Israel as they marched around in the wilderness for 40 years.
But God sustained them. He kept them alive. And that's what this celebration is all about. And it's called the Feast of Booths or the Feast of Tabernacles because people erected booths and tabernacles.
They built them out of just leaves and sticks and they're all over the place throughout the city because people would come from all over the place into Jerusalem. They just crowd in there for this big week-long feast and celebration.
So they say, come on, Jesus, let's go down to Jerusalem. And he says, no, it's not time yet for me to go. Why? Because he knew what awaited him. The Pharisees were still angry with him. They were still wanting to kill him because he had had the temerity to heal a man on the Sabbath.
In fact, John chapter 5, verse 18, after this whole incident where he had healed this man, we read, this was why the Jews were seeking all the more to worship him, to adore him, to thank him for healing this poor man who'd been paralyzed for all these many years.
No, they wanted to kill him because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, thus making himself equal with God. So then in chapter 7, at the midpoint of the Feast of Booths, Jesus goes up to the temple.
He wasn't there before, but now he appears in the temple at the halfway point. And we know from reading the text that the Pharisees were in fact waiting for him to show up. But when he doesn't show up for a while and they're asking around about him and he doesn't show up, they relax a little bit and he manages to make his way to the temple and he teaches.
The first thing the Pharisees, the Jewish leaders, do is they scoff at his lack of credentials, his lack of an academic resume. Where did you go to school? You didn't go to any of our schools. And as he engages with them, he says they wanted to kill him.
He's just harking back to what they knew was true. But the crowd that's gathered doesn't know that. So they say, you're crazy. You have a demon. His teaching, Jesus' teaching, cloaked in language they failed to understand, confounded them.
But that didn't stop them, the Pharisees, the temple guard, from trying to arrest him. And somehow he avoids arrest and draws little attention for a few days until we come to our text, that is to say the end of this feast of booths.
So we come to what's called the great day. That's our first waypoint, the great day, verse 37. On the last day of the feast, the great day. Well what makes it so great? What makes it? It is great. It is the pinnacle.
What makes it so wonderful? As I said, the feast went on for seven days and on each of the previous days, there was a single procession where they would go, the high priest and all the men from the temple would go down to Siloam and they would fill this golden carafe, this golden container with water.
And they would march back, this is in the morning, they would march back to the temple and there's all this hullabaloo, I mean there's a lot of stuff going on, in fact, yeah, there's a lot of things going on.
Well, to just give you an idea, they've got this parade going on and these massive crowds would gather around and they would all be singing Psalms 113 to 118. And when they got to 118, the tourists would shake these wooden contraptions called lulabs.
They're like thunder sticks. They would hold them in the right hand. They were made of several different kinds of wood, myrtle and palm and all this stuff and they would shake these things in one hand like this, making a racket.
I mean, it kind of made me think of the World Cup a few years ago in South Africa where they kept blowing those things. What were those called? Yeah, those things. But they're rattling these things in their right hand and in their left hand they're holding up a piece of citrus fruit and you go, well, what's the point in that?
Well, they're making this noise, they're really celebrating. This is a big to-do to celebrate the faithfulness of God in the wilderness. So they're holding this thing and they're making the racket with this hand and this hand just symbolizing the fruitfulness that they hope that God will bring, that they'll have enough water.
This is all surrounds water, by the way. That they'll have enough water to grow crops, that they'll have an abundant fruitful harvest. That's the point of all this. But they would shake these things and as this whole thing comes up, then they would shout when they get back to the temple, give thanks to the Lord three times.
Then water and some wine were poured out as an offering to Yahweh. This was all to celebrate His faithfulness, to memorialize the faithfulness of their forefathers and to keep the Lord to be in His good graces, as it were, and to ask Him for continuing favor.
But they would do it once a day on these six days, while on the seventh day they would do it seven times. And so it would just get rowdier and rowdier and rowdier and they would be carrying on just shaking these things and making a big racket.
So this day, this great day, was the pinnacle, was the finale, was the peak of the celebration. This was the greatest possible stage when all these pilgrims who had come from all the surrounding areas would all be gathered around the temple to celebrate this great day.
So what a stage. I mean, this is like the Super Bowl. I mean, in our modern world, this is an incredible platform. And onto this platform steps the Messiah and He makes, in verse 37, what I'm calling the great offer.
We've had the great day and now the great offer. Jesus stood up and cried out, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Now again, just think about what this whole celebration is about. It's called the Festival of Booze or Tabernacles, but it's really about sustaining life in the desert.
Forty years the Israelites marched around in the wilderness. That's something worth celebrating as they think about God's faithfulness to them. And so that's what they're celebrating. And again, the water offering, there's a wine offering too, but the main focus here is on water.
So Jesus says, if anyone thirsts. Now I first want to note that just the posture in which he's taking or the posture that he's taking here is very unusual, right? In that culture, if you are going to teach, what do you do?
You sit. You sit down. That's the position of authority in that culture is to sit down. Everybody goes, oh, he's sitting down. He's the teacher. We need to listen. Here he is standing up. Why? Well, I think his voice kind of gives us an idea.
There's an urgency, a plea. In fact, this verb where it says cried out points to also an urgency. It means to cry out or scream even. So I think it'd be fair to say that if this were to happen today, we call this street preaching.
He wants to get attention. He wants people to listen to him. But this isn't a great big sermon. This is just a statement. But it's a wonderful and packed statement. It's the kind of proclamation that you make and when people hear it, they just go, what is he trying to say?
We understand the illusion to thirst and water, but what is it that you're really trying to say except this? They all are very familiar with one thing. The idea of thirst, the idea of concern about water.
It is a constant struggle. They do live in the desert. So if they were to just take that crassly and literally as frequently happened to Jesus when he was speaking, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.
Well, let's go to Jesus and get a drink. Let's go get some water. He's serving. That's not what he's talking about. If you recall, if you want to just turn back to John chapter four for a moment, his interaction with the Samaritan woman, the woman at the well, and I'm going to start in verse seven.
Actually, let's back up a little bit further. Verse six, Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water.
Jesus said to her, give me a drink for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you, a Jew, asked for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria, for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans?
Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it was or who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw water with and the well is deep.
Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father, Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself as did his sons and his livestock. Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.
The water that I give or the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. And she said, the woman said to him, sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.
She took it what crassly, literally, but the imagery is very similar to what we're going to see here. She did not understand what he was saying and go back to chapter seven. She didn't understand what he was saying until when?
Until or even understood who he was until he revealed her sordid past to her. Once, once they got to that point of understanding, then she said, you know, sir, I perceive you are a prophet. She got it then she understood.
But the offer that's made here is very similar to what he made to her eternal life. Ostensibly, Jesus is offering not water, but living water, eternal life, and he's doing so indiscriminately. If anyone thirsts any person, it's true.
However, there are many who are not thirsty because he's not talking about physical thirst. He's talking about a spiritual thirst. And there are many who aren't thirsty at all. Let me put it another way.
Does anyone have, does any person have an independent sense of spiritual thirst? In other words, does anyone in and of themselves say to themselves, you know what? I have a spiritual need. I have a sin problem and I want a solution to that sin problem.
All right. Well, let me put it another way. Is there anyone who of their own volition, of their own choice, pursues God? But this morning, what do we read in Psalm 14? And it's cited again in Romans 3, right?
There is no one who seeks after God. Everyone turns their own way. They are sinful. They don't seek after God. They don't have a spiritual thirst. A spiritual thirst is really not, well, it's not natural at all.
In fact, it is only supernaturally induced. That is, it can only be given by God. In fact, you don't have to turn there, but even back in John chapter 6, verses 44 and 65, we are told by Jesus that no one can come to him unless he is drawn or unless he is granted the desire by the Father.
Well, what does that mean? No one can. It means no one can. No one has the ability. No one has the capacity. No one has the spiritual thirst. They're not aware of a spiritual need. They're spiritually dead.
They have no desire for Christ. They have no desire to be right with God. And that's the idea of this thirst. If anyone is thirsty, I could put it another way. If you walk up to somebody and say, would you like to be right with God?
The odds are they're going to say something like, I already am. I'm fine with God. God's fine with me. We both have a mutually pleasing relationship where he leaves me alone and I leave him alone or something of that nature.
What Jesus said is consistent. Those who are drawn by the Father are those who have a spiritual thirst. Those who have been given a supernatural recognition of their problem. They realize they have a lack of righteousness that they need before a holy God, that there is no way that they can be accepted into heaven apart from something being done for them.
They have a need for yourselves. How many years did you kind of scoff at the idea of Jesus? Or how many times did you hear the gospel and say, that's not for me? Or did you think to yourself, well, I'm okay with God.
There's no reason for Him not to like me. It's only when you have your true spiritual condition revealed to you, that when you realize that you are spiritually undone, you're undressed before God, that you have nothing to present to Him.
It's like the same feeling, although not the same sense, as when Isaiah before the throne of God just said, I'm undone. I can't get there. God is too holy and I'm too sinful. I live among a sinful people.
There is nothing good in me. There's nothing to commend me to God. It's only then that Christ is appealing to you. It's only then that this invitation to come to me and drink appeals to you, that you want to.
Why? Because you recognize you have that need, you have that thirst. And herein is satisfaction for your soul's plight and peace with God. It is in Christ alone. I don't know about you, but I've heard of people who have identified themselves as born-again Christians or Protestants or however they want to phrase it.
I'm an evangelical. And then they strangely convert to Mormonism or Catholicism, you know, going home to Rome. Or they convert to Islam or something else. Well, what does that tell you? What does that tell you if someone goes from some Lutheran church or some other kind of, usually it's a wishy-washy denomination, to Rome or they convert from, you know, some Pentecostal church or something to Islam or whatever they're doing.
I knew a man who converted to Mormonism. Said he was born again and then, you know, joined the Mormon church. Well, can that be true? The answer is no. Because if you go to Christ and he satisfies your thirst, then you don't go looking for something else.
You don't say, Jesus isn't enough for me. I need something more. What does he say there? He doesn't say, come to me and get a drink and then go somewhere else. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.
That's satisfaction. It's the end of your longing for spiritual things. You'll want to learn more about Christ. You'll want to strengthen your relationship with him, but you won't go looking for another.
Your spiritual thirst is slaked, it's satisfied. There is no other. What of a man who says, you know, I've come to Christ and had my fill, I've had my fair share, but he did not satisfy. Well, that's not the testimony of a born-again Christian, which is a blessed redundancy.
A Christian, right, someone who's been born again, it's the testimony of a blasphemer. Someone who's speaking false things about God. Jesus Christ does not satisfy. That's false. There is no such thing.
If someone says, I used to be born again, the answer is, wherever they are now, the answer is, no, you weren't. How do we know that? Well, just even in chapter 6. How many people does Christ lose that the Father gives him?
None. The Father's will is not thwarted. The Holy Spirit's seal is not removable. You know, he doesn't say, mine, and then you go, no, I'm not yours anymore. I'm done. If you are his, if you have eaten of his flesh and drank his blood, as he says in chapter 6, you are irrevocably his.
When he says that, by the way, he's not talking about the elements. He's talking about taking in all of him, taking him as he is. So we've seen the great day, the great offer, and now the great result.
Look at verse 38. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. And you say, I'm not really sure I want my heart to, you know, explode in rivers of living water.
But our English translations really don't do us any favors here. First of all, whoever believes in me might make it seem like whoever wants to, whoever chooses to, but as is usual in the Gospel of John, that's not the case here.
It is a participle, and it really means the ones who constantly believe in me, the ones who are in a state of being in belief. Saving grace is not a matter of choice, but a sovereign work of God with permanent, ongoing results.
Otherwise, Jesus could have no confidence in when he said that, you know, no one shall snatch them out of my hand, out of the Father's hand. He loses none. Saving grace is not a matter of choice, but again, permanent work of God.
Now, our faithfulness may rise and fall, but our salvation is not measured by our faithfulness, right? Thankfully, if your salvation was measured by your faithfulness to Christ, you'd be in trouble, but it's not.
It's measured by his faithfulness and his completed work. Now, there are many Old Testament passages that link the idea of the Holy Spirit with water and take a view of an end time, an eschatological view with the Messiah in mind, the Holy Spirit and water.
Scholar D .A. Carson says this, he says, All these verses together, there's a huge list of them. But it's important to note that it's not the believer that is the source of this water, this life-giving water.
It is the Holy Spirit, and we know that from verse 39. I'm not going to go to verse 39 yet, but John explains it in verse 39. So what is living water? What's the difference between living water and dead water?
Well, one is live and one's dead. That simple. A good example really is the Dead Sea. The Jordan River, living water. What happens to it, though? It goes into the Dead Sea. And what's the Dead Sea good for?
What's it good for? Yeah, that's right. Selling cosmetic products to stupid tourists. That's what it's good for. I mean, the mud and all that stuff is just, you know, well, how much will you pay for that, sir?
And next thing you know, $100 later, you've got a nice little tub of goo or something. But it isn't good for anything else. You can't water your crops with it. You can't grow anything. You know, the reason why they call it the Dead Sea is not because a bunch of people died there.
It's because nothing lives within it. It's just so full of sediment and not sentiment, but sediment and minerals that nothing can grow there. Living water, on the other hand, is not still. It's not sludge-filled.
It's valuable, useful, life-sustaining. When our Lord says rivers of living water will flow from those who believe, what is he saying? Well, first of all, that the Holy Spirit will take residence in that person, and that it's going to have a permanent, ongoing effect.
But here are a few things that just kind of come to mind as I was thinking about this. The saved person, someone who has been indwelt by the Holy Spirit, has a joy that results in evangelism. Why do you say that?
Well, just think about it. How do you contain? This is this flowing river, this water, living water. How do you contain the joy that you have in salvation? You know, when you first get saved, you just think to yourself, Boy, sure I'm glad I have all my sins forgiven.
I think I'll go take a nap. I don't know about you, but I was pretty excited. When the guilt and everything that goes with sin, when you know that the penalty has been removed from you, there's a weightlessness that attends that.
You know, there's a sense of joy and a bubbling over, and not in a Rodney Howard Brown sense, but there's a genuine joy that goes with that. Why would you want to keep that secret? Why would you want to keep a lid on that?
Why would you not want to give the good news that God saves sinners to others? Why would you just think, you know what? This is good for me, but I don't want to share it. Imagine this. Imagine that you had some disease, and I won't say Ebola.
You had some disease, and you knew that it was going to kill you. And you were very near the end, and all of a sudden, somebody comes in and they give you the antidote, and you drink the antidote, and you go, Wow, I'm cured.
I'm not going to die. But I'm not going to tell anybody about this. I mean, there might be other people with this disease, and I don't want them to get the antidote. What? What are you talking about? You'd be one of the most miserable, hateful people in the history of the planets.
Why would you do such a thing? But you have been cured of a deadly disease, in fact, the most deadly disease, because if you die in your sins, there is no cure. There is no remedy. There is no end. You will spend eternity in hell.
Why would you not offer the cure? Now that you have been cured, why would you not offer that to other people? They're afflicted. They're going to die in their sins and spend eternity in hell, and you will withhold that cure from them.
Why? Why? So I think evangelism is certainly a work of the Spirit that begins in the lives of most Christians almost immediately. There are other fruits or works of the Spirit in Galatians 5, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
As I said this morning, every single one of these fruits, if you look at the life and the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, you see them in abundance. Well, why is that? It's because as a man being filled with the Holy Spirit, he exuded these.
They literally burst out of him. And the same Holy Spirit who works in the life of Jesus works in the life of every believer. Of course, we don't have a sinless nature, and we slow the Spirit's work by our own sinful failings.
But the Holy Spirit unfailingly produces fruit in the life of every believer. Not always as rapidly as we'd like, but there is fruit. All these things should be present in the life of any believer. This is an outworking of that river.
Also, another outworking of that river of living water. An understanding of the will of God. Well, how can I say that? Because it's out of the Bible. Ephesians 5 says,. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
Well, how do you do that? And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. If being drunk leads to foolishness and sin, which it does, then being filled with the Holy Spirit ought to lead to what?
Right thinking, wisdom, and right actions. Not perfection, but certainly a life notably different from that of unbelievers. Also, the work of the Holy Spirit and an understanding of the Word of God. 1 Corinthians 2, verses 14 and 16 says,.
The natural, that is to say, the unsaved person, does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. How is that possible? Because of the work of the Holy Spirit.
As I thought about this, I thought of this one. This is just an extreme example. How about this? How about courage in the midst of the most difficult circumstances? I mean, we could point to the life of Jesus and see how he was empowered, but how about Stephen?
Let's look at Acts chapter 6 for a moment. And I'm going to start at verse 10. But they, this council, the Jewish leaders, but they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking.
Then they secretly instigated men who said, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God. And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council.
And they set up false witnesses who said, This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law. I could go on, but I'll just get to the end here. After Stephen responds to the false allegations by doing what?
By saying, You know what? You're right. I repent. By blaspheming and giving them the gospel. Verse 54 of chapter 7. Now, when they heard these things, they were enraged and they ground their teeth at him.
But listen, he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. From beginning to end in this whole episode, Stephen had the Holy Spirit and stood steadfast, even when they were stoning him to death.
Now, there's a necessary inference, as I've been kind of implying here. If someone exhibits none of the Holy Spirit's work in his or her life, would we say then, Well, you know what? I don't see any fruit of the Spirit.
I don't see any evidence that the Holy Spirit's at work in this person, but he's a Christian. We might say that. We'd probably be wrong. If there's no change in the person, then there's no change in their standing before God.
The Holy Spirit works his work. He produces fruit. He does not fail. Again, not all these things are going to be perfect in everybody's life, but there's going to be some evidence. If we looked at a flow chart over a chronology, a timeline, we would be able to see a constant, well, not constant, but there would be an increase over time.
We would see that. And finally, let's look at the great promise in verse 39. The great promise. Now, this he said about the Spirit. Again, this is John explaining this. He's acting as a narrator, wanting to make sure that we understand what Jesus is saying in light of future events, events that he knows, but that at the time of the Feast of Tabernacles, the people there would not have known.
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. Now, literally, the Spirit had not been given, listen, for it was not yet Spirit.
You know, you look at your watch and you go, well, it's not yet Spirit. It's getting close. It's about half an hour before Spirit. This is, it's an interesting Greek saying, but basically he wanted us to know that the Spirit was not yet released as he would be on the day of Pentecost, that he was not yet invested in the lives of believers and of the church as he would be at Pentecost.
Now, that we know that it is not yet Spirit tells us that, and the text tells us that he had not been glorified. Of course, this includes the truths that he had not yet been crucified, resurrected, and ascended to heaven.
It's interesting how John phrases it there. He could have said he had not yet been crucified, he had not yet been resurrected, but he doesn't say those things. He had not yet been glorified. When Jesus arrives glorified, that's when the Holy Spirit descends.
When he goes up into heaven, the Holy Spirit comes down. Some verses just kind of back that up from the Gospel of John, John 14, verses 16 and 17. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.
You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. He's among you now, and he will be in you always, and in a fuller, deeper way. John 16, verse 7. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away.
For if I do not go away, the helper, that is to say the Holy Spirit, will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. Just as the Father sends the Son, the Son sends the Spirit. Same idea. The Spirit submits to the will of the Son in coming.
I like what Leon Morris, a biblical scholar, says. He says the Bible does not speak of the Spirit as totally inactive until that point. There's much about him in the Old Testament and the Gospels, but nothing can compare to his activity in the apostolic age.
Then it was Spirit, it was Spirit, in a way that it had never been before. It was definitely Spirit. When Jesus' work was finished, when he had made atonement for sin, when he ascended to heaven, he sent the Holy Spirit in a new way upon the church.
But Calvary had to precede Pentecost. It had to be that way. Jesus, the Messiah, the one whom the Pharisees rejected and the crowds rejected, stood before them offering eternal life. He offered to satisfy their spiritual thirst, and he did so in a way that was really an offer with unending worth.
It was a holy flood indeed, an endless source of spiritual contentment, an offer of constant, never-ending, spiritual river of living waters. Spiritual contentment, growth, peace with God. And only the Spirit-filled Messiah could make such an offer.
Let's pray. Father in heaven, Lord, what a blessing it is to think, to just consider the scene in the temple on that day. Lord, we thank you that we have a Savior who died for our sins, who was raised on the third day and now sits on your right hand.
Lord, we praise you for sending your Spirit to be in your church, to be with your people. And Lord, as we look even at the times in the book of Acts where it was Spirit, we're just so blessed by all that you accomplish by your Spirit.
Father, I pray for each one here tonight that we would be encouraged to examine ourselves and even to look and make sure the Holy Spirit is active and operational in our lives. Father, we pray for these things in Christ's name.
Amen.