Rivers of Living Water — T.M. Anderson

And make it to be an oasis where people can come and find the blessing of God. Then dear Lord, we pray to put thy seal and thine approval upon thy servant that preaches the word at this moment. Grant, dear Lord, that we may give thy word according as thou hast in thyself spoken it, that our faith shall stand as it is in the word of the living God and not the word of man.

Whatever design or purpose the common fool may have to distract us or disturb us or agitate us, we pray thee to give us restfulness in thyself and relief from his opposition. And may we triumph gloriously in thee till we come at last to the crowning where we shall crown thee Lord of all.

And give thee the thanks that thy name is worthy to receive from our adoring spirits, and we shall give thee all the glory and praise in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Everybody that wants Brother Anderson to take full time, say amen!

That's the point now, that's sure. Sounded like they meant it, didn't it? I'll let you out in fair time. I don't consider that taking an offering is preliminary to any service. And I was greatly surprised when I whispered to Brother French and said, What could you do with $10 ,000 down here?

He could build a tabernacle adequate to take care of perhaps twice as many as this was at sea. You couldn't build it anywhere else for $30 ,000. They do it because they have so much donated labor. Let's have that big tabernacle over there somewhere and make this into a dining room.

Jesus’ Promise of Living Water in John 7

All right. I'm reading for you a paragraph found in the Gospel according to John and in chapter 7, words of our Lord spoken in rather unusual and yet very beautiful truth. Beginning in the chapter, John chapter 7, the reading beginning with the 37th verse.

In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth in me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive. For the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified. In giving to you the message of the morning, as I have prayed over it and meditated over it, I want to bring to our attention, to my own heart and to that of yours, the things that the Savior has spoken about the Spirit.

John said, This spake he of the Spirit. That is, in the 39th verse where I read your lesson of John chapter 7. I think if you have read with any degree of care the ministry and preaching of the Savior, you will have been impressed how frequently he spoke regarding the coming and of the giving of the Holy Spirit.

You may recall that he evidently looked over a crowd and saw that the parents had been thoughtful of their children's needs, anticipating those needs. I think he might have said, I see that certain of you have brought some food along for your children.

And he said that if you, being evil, limited as you are with your infirmities of evil, have wisdom enough to give good gifts to your children, how much more, yes, how much more, how much more does the shining splendor of the noonday sun exceed that of a tallow candle?

How much more does the vast waters of the seven seas exceed that of a spring branch? And how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Spirit to them that ask him? Then you remember how he took his company in to a very close conference with himself as he was under the shadow of the cross, and spoke to them about the coming of the Comforter, and even listed them for prayer when he said, I will pray the Father, and he will send you another Comforter.

Not a substitute, but just another member of the Trinity. But I call your attention to certain of those things to refresh your mind, but I presume that in all that the Savior has ever spoken about the Holy Spirit, or all that has ever been given to us by mouth of prophet, there has nothing ever been spoken that is as amazing as the utterance of the Savior regarding this proclamation concerning the coming of the Spirit.

On that great day, the Feast of the Tabernacles on that last day, when he looked over that company, seeing that they were so dissatisfied with their ritualism and had so little in common with it, it meant so little, his heart yearned over them.

And out of that came his proclamation, his plea, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. Now, who could understand that? Well, listen at the further statement in the Astonishing Language. He that believeth on me, or in me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly, or out of his innermost self, shall flow river, no utterance like it anywhere in holy writ, was so anxious and so concerned that we might understand what he meant, they had John to interpret it.

And thus the interpretation is, that this from the inner soul of the promised rivers, this spake he of the Holy Ghost, which they that believed on him should receive. And then made this rather interesting notation.

Holy Ghost was not yet given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. So what I want you to see now in the time allotted, is to focus your attention upon these two things. One of them is the glorified Savior.

The other is the gift of the Spirit. And I think if you are a careful observer, you will see that these two facts are so intimately related, that the giving of the Holy Spirit could not become a reality till the Savior had been glorified.

The Glorification of the Savior and the Gift of the Spirit

So that we must look a little at the significance, the meaning of the glorifying of the Savior, before we can view a little of the giving of the Spirit. The word glory and the word glorified, as revealed in the scripture, particularly in the New Testament, is one of the most difficult words to define.

It is almost as elusive as trying to analyze a sunbeam. It is clear, we understand it a little of it when we see it, and yet it's hard for us to analyze its significance. ...from an original word that takes quite a number of terms as synonyms to explain it.

But as it is applied to the Savior, it has to do with his exalted position as the Savior of mankind. It has to do with his dignity, with his honor, with his majesty, with his might, with the gloriousness of his person revealed in all that he has manifested himself to be as the very express image of the living God.

He is glorified, as John here expressed it, ...when he has been seated at the right hand of the majesty on high, there, in that position, exalted to that office, mediator and minister of the new covenant, all of that, whenever that was to take place, this event was to be consubstantial of God.

Then, as evidence of that, and as an effectual giving from that, came the glorious gift of the Holy Ghost. To show you a little of that picture, as it is recorded in Acts 2 and 33, when they were looking around with amazement regarding what had happened to these men, they couldn't fathom the mystery to understand what had occurred.

The best they could think of, they were full of new wine. Peter said, it's too early in the morning to get drunk. But Peter said this, Well, God hath exalted to his own right hand, and received the promise of the Holy Ghost, which he hath shed forth on us.

Now, if you look at that statement, you will see that there was an apparent agreement, a covenant, whatever you may think of it, between the giving Father and the Son whom he sacrificed on the cross. What covenant or agreement was, that if you come into the world and sacrifice your life to save men according to the will of the Father, and successfully achieve that task, and triumph in thy condensation and in thy crucifixion, then, as compensation to you, as for what you have done for me," said the Father, and glorified me on the earth, we'll send the plentitude of the Holy Ghost to that little company of believers,.

For yet in the world, he could not come until Christ had been glorified in his ascension to the right hand of the Father. But when he arrived, it didn't take him long to let that company on earth know that he had arrived.

They cut the bottom out of heaven and dumped upon them and poured out upon them, for the Greek word for shed means to literally turn upside down and dump it all out on them. The gifts of the Holy Ghost.

Now in that little preview of it, I come back to focus your attention not upon the fact, altogether upon the fact, of the Savior's condescension into the world when he said, I have glorified thee on the earth, and then in his crucifixion, and then in his final ascension to his exalted position, and there inaugurated the day of Pentecost and the dispensation of the Spirit, and made it possible for us to receive the Holy Ghost.

I want you to look a little bit more into what he did when he glorified the Father on the earth, and then prayed that he might be glorified, the Father might glorify him with the glory which he had before the world was.

Christ’s Sacrificial Offering and the End of Ritualism

You see, there was a task to be performed. There was a job to be done. And there was something to be accomplished for the Father's will and for human need. And when the Savior came into the world, he came here with an express purpose of giving himself a sacrificial offering, that he might save us from the least, the last, and the all of sin, and bring into being, into reality, by his own sacrificial death, a salvation that was capable of saving men to the uttermost extent of their need, and to glorify God in it.

There is something final in the statements of the Savior than in John's interpretation of it. Something that we gather a little from the fact of the occasion when he spoke this. For it is said that he uttered these things on the great day, the last day of the feast.

It meant more to inspiration to say a last day of a seven-day feast of tabernacles. It meant more than that. For all that was in that ritual, and all that was in the things that were patterned, had all now come to their conclusion.

For he, of whom all of it had pointed, had come in the end of all ritualism, had reached his last day. And that one who should take over and finish with finality all the ritualism that preceded that, was now meant to inaugurate for us not a system of offerings of animals and the shedding of animal blood, but the Lamb of God that was manifested to take away the sin of the world.

It was not only a last day as far as ritualism concerned, but it ushered in the last days of a dispensation of divine grace, wherein that we are now living in these last days. This is God's final and God's full effort to save us from sin.

In this day we'll make our last choice. In this day we'll receive our last call. In these last days we'll receive our last conviction. Whatever we do now, we must do now in the light of the truth which we have received.

For the Savior has come and made a supreme sacrifice and terminated all the ritualism that ever preceded it. There will never be anything coming after him that will be greater. This is the last, and this is the great day, and this is the day of our opportunity.

And the Son of God showed him the burden of human sin and laid it upon him the iniquities of us all and made him to be the sin-bearer in these last days for us. He came into this world knowing the size of the task he'd have to perform, and God praised him and supplied him with everything that was necessary to finish the job.

And out there on the working hill, carved out of the wrinkled face of Mother Earth, fought the battle of the ages and came to grips with the illness of mankind, for a depravity had lurked in the souls of men from time immemorial for all the law and all the ritualism and all the sacrifice of the Old Testament had never been able to grapple with successfully the depravity of the human soul.

With all it may give could only give them a bit of temporary relief, for if a worshiper had once been purged, he would have had no more conscience of sin. But sin still lurked and hid itself in the confines of his spirit, and God could not open a holy heaven to an unholy people.

And if the sacrifices of that day of the Old Testament were inadequate, God would find a sacrifice great enough, not from the fields, not from the flocks, not from our families, but from heaven itself.

And there, on the middle cross, he would come to grips with depravity and condemn sin in the flesh and finish the job and deliver the immortal souls of men from the ravenous powers of iniquity and the bondage which had held them in its grip through the years.

Where nothing else could do it, he could do it, and he made a sacrifice out there for us to deliver us from our depravity. But I remind you another thing, and that is that death had waited with aggravating patience to lay in the graveyard the sainted dead, and they had been moved to the fears of death.

Somewhere, someplace, there must be a glorious Savior, great enough in his power, not only to come to grips with depravity, but to see what could be done about this thing called death. And out there on the middle cross, when he bowed his head upon his priceless breast and said, it is finished, he triumphed over death.

I went out there in my imagination and watched him as I saw him bleeding from his seven wounds, suffering the just for the unjust, they might bring us to God. And when he bowed his head and said in a fainting voice, into thy hands I commend my spirit.

I looked to see what took place. I saw a messenger hurry over to the palace of Pontius Pilate and say, Jesus of Nazareth is dead. I saw another one hurry to the place of the high priest and said to him, Jesus of Nazareth is dead.

The high priest scorned and sneered and pulled his silken robes around him in contempt of the man of Galilee. I saw his mother bow her head and shed her tears and bow to the decree that her son was dead.

I saw his disconsolate disciples look like that every hope that had ever been built had suddenly collapsed and all their expectations had been shattered because Jesus of Nazareth was dead. I think all hell must have gone into celebration and perhaps the devil climbed up on a pulpit in perdition and delivered a dissertation on death and held the Son of God in a grip of his power.

But you know he wasn't dead. He only entered there in order that he might end it. He only gave himself to it in order that he might destroy it. And he rolled back the grave and climbed over death and lifted up his voice to echo around the world and shout to God some news.

Behold, I am alive, hell and death, and I have climbed over it and the grave shall not hold my sins. The dust of the century shall not bury them. I shall bring them forth into time for that glorious day because I have climbed over death and was not going to die.

And we shall live forever in the currents of the mind of age. Yet Jesus Christ said, I know in a weak moment he will anoint it in the hour of his death. And yet when a man is bleeding white in his agony and anguish, his strength is waning.

And yet he still remains the perfect Savior. For when a poor thief caught in his sin, dying to the sight of his Lord, looked up at him and plaintively cried out in his anguish, Remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

There was enough strength yet left in the dying, bleeding Son of God that I could put out his hand and touch him virtually and touch him with the touch of his outstretched hand and shove him with his blood.

And I think he might have whispered to him and said, The chariot with its saint driver which shall descend from heaven to bear me up to the triumph of my throne shall wait for you and I shall take you along with me as being the first trophy of my redemption.

And thus it is that he was glorified when he set a transformed thief on the portals of glory and he introduced him to the archangels of God and said, Here's the first one. I heard one time about some small boys that were diving off a springboard into a deep hole of water and a man came up and he said, How deep is it?

One little lad said, Mister, it's awful deep. He said, I've got a shiny half dollar for the boy that can touch bottom. And one little fellow leaped and was gone dangerously long and presently came up and he said, I touched it.

The next little fellow made his dive and he was gone so long that he looked like he wouldn't come again. But presently his little head bobbed above the surface. He was so out of breath he could not say a word.

He didn't need to for he had some black mud in his hand. And Jesus Christ made the leap into seeing for us as a sacrifice and touched bottom and stood on the bottom and raised up the bottom and looked under it and gathered up a thief, a criminal.

He had a celebration as to the glorifying of the Savior. I say, praise the Lord. ...foreseen and foretold his triumph that he would ascend and God had interpreted for us Jesus foreseeing that triumph.

You know, our Lord had never had a doubt in his mind regarding his ultimate victory and triumph over Satan to save us from sin. He had not yet been glorified. He had not yet been crucified. He had not yet been resurrected and ascended to heaven.

The Thirsting Soul and Christ’s Invitation

And yet he is so sure that he shall achieve the Father's work that he already opens up the thing and gives us the invitation and proclaims it in his voice when he said, If any man thirst, they come unto me.

It is translated there that the Savior cried and said, If any man thirst. And the Greek word for cry is one that called out ...the din, the confusion. ...around the feast and gathered around in the city.

The Son of God lifted his voice until there were a few ears that could hear him about the din and the confusion and a wild glorious proclamation, If any man thirst, let him come. They were carrying a little pail of water from the pool and pouring it out before the great autumn as they went backwards and forth with that little journey carrying the waters.

Perhaps there were those in the multitude who had been there so long that they were beginning to get thirsty and the very sight of water made them thirsty. And the Savior took advantage of it. He said, It isn't the pool of Siloam.

It isn't any other pool or any other well. The wells of everlasting water are standing here now wide open. And if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. As the scriptures have said, Out of his inmost parts shall flow rivers of living water.

Blessed be God for something that can shake our thirst and satisfy the cravings of our soul and save us from burning up with our fevers that can give to us the everlasting waters of life. Glory be unto God for satisfaction in the Lord.

And I know a little of that appeal. I don't know how you lay yourselves about it. I don't know how that appeals to you. But if ever you once in your life have ever been parched and tormented with a real thirst and a real desire, you are not going to take any substitute.

You've got to have the real thing, and you never will be satisfied and never pull your tongue in until you are satisfied. Back when I was about eighteen years of age, I had a case of old-fashioned typhoid fever.

Why, the doctors in that country section thought if they gave you water or gave you any food, it meant sure death. And they wouldn't give me but a few drops of water and no food. And I got into delirium.

And I could see snakes and all sorts of creatures crawling over me and stinging my body. I was literally burnt up with fever. And I was laying in a bed where I could look out the window and see the vast expanse of the Ohio River as it flowed on.

I raced across that river, and I was hanging on the middle of it. I parched through. A few drops were a difference and were not enough. I was thirsty. And if you had come up to me and said, Oh, young man, I've got an interesting story I want to tell you.

I didn't want to hear a story. I wanted water. You'd have come up and said, I've got a beautiful song I want to sing. I want music. I wanted water. Someone had come up and said, I want to tell you about a good job, God willing.

I didn't want a job. I wanted water. And nothing they could have said or nothing they could offer would have ever satisfied my thirst. And whenever you reach that place that you want the Holy Ghost and you want God and you want all that He means to you, you won't take any substitute.

You won't listen to somebody else's fancy story. You won't listen to their sweet music. You won't offer for a job in the church. You've got something crying out in you that wants the Holy Ghost. You never will be satisfied until you have it.

You never can tap the sources of the fountains of living water until you do have it. You won't be satisfied with a shower. You've got to have a deluge. You may start out with a drink, but it's got to terminate in the rivers.

You've got to have something from God that will satisfy the deepest longing of your heart. And when once we have a drink at that fountain and enjoy what it means to have our first drink by the gift of the Holy Ghost, everything else looks so cheap.

They're satisfying and so trivial and so small. They can't even interest you in it. You're not interested in it. You're not concerned about it. You've got the one thing that God intended you should have, and that and no more.

I say praise the Lord. I say praise the Lord. And when you recognize that fact, now I want you to see in a hundred moments, I want you to see something of what the Savior has embraced in, packed in to the fact that out of your innermost soul shall flow the rivers of living water.

The Holy Spirit as the Person Who Glorifies Christ

It is one of those mysterious statements, and yet he is speaking of the Spirit, and there must be some factual truth in his highly figurative language. So it is that we can get a little glimpse of that fact.

May I remind you of this first of all, that there is something very peculiarly and very interestingly stated in that connection between the glorifying of the Savior and the gift of the Spirit. Now my contention is that what is provisional in the fact that the Savior glorified and on his exalted throne, in his majesty and in his might, and from that exalted throne has given us the Holy Spirit, and it could not be given until he reached that, then what is provisional can become experiential within our own hearts.

So I think I am on safe ground when I say this. If you want the Holy Ghost, if I want the Holy Ghost, if I am thirsty for the waters of life which he alone can give and start the surging within my soul, then I, of my own volition and choice, must give the Savior his exalted place in my soul that he has in heaven, and according to him, the same dignity and the same honor and the same worship and the same adoration and the same pleasure of all that is accorded in heaven, I must accord him that in my heart.

And any man or woman that gets on your prayer boat and asks Almighty God to give you the Holy Ghost, if you are not willing to put Jesus Christ in his exalted place, in the highest honors and glorify him and abdicate the throne of your own personality and surrender all to him, you'll never get the blessing.

For his specific purpose is to be glorified in them who receive the Holy Ghost. I've seen them come and drape themselves across the mourners' base like a sack of sand. You can sing bass, tenor, and caribou and every other way to them, and they don't get anywhere.

They either want a feeling or want an emotion or want some sort of a gift. That isn't it. The thing it comes for is to glorify Christ in your heart and in your life and not for any other reason. Whatever else may be added is his business, but it's for that and that only.

The Savior said that. He said that. In the gift of the Holy Spirit, you receive not only the Father's promise, but you receive a person. A little phrase that we're getting our eyes off the person and on the certain emotions or certain external evidences that the person may bring to pass, and get our minds off the person.

The Spirit is not an if. He is not an emotion. He is not a mere influence. He is when you receive him as a person. He answers your faith and understanding as a person. There are people all over the country that have got the idea that you don't get the Holy Ghost, and the evidence of it is you speak in tongues.

I remind you without being facetious in any way that a gift of tongues is not even necessary capacity to speak any language, for Balaam's ass spoke with tongues as a miraculous gift of God, and it has neither moral capacity.

Now, I didn't say that. It's cast in reflection on the scriptural gifts. But I'll tell you this. Whatever can be duplicated, whatever can be counterfeited, whatever may be imitated, whatever the devil himself might imitate, would be dangerous.

Ask your soul, you know, from what source you're headed. And if you spoke a language, and if Satan could give you a language to speak, if you could work yourself up into it and speak it, it would be promised.

So God would have to give you something that would be more assuring than a language, or an emotion, or anything else. If he gives those gifts. But they're not evidence of anything spiritual. Not one thing in order.

But when he gives you a person, whenever he brings the person of the Holy Ghost in, he don't have to have any emotion. He doesn't have to display himself in some strange language. What he is in himself is enough.

If I should ask any intelligent man or woman in this audience this morning, after the service is over, if I were to ask you, was Rob Flint present in that service? If you've got two eyes or one eye, you could see he was here.

Well, I'd say, how do you know he was there? Did he climb a pole? Did he stand on his head? Did he run the aisles? Did he laugh or sing a special song? Or did he preach in the same language? He said nothing.

His presence was all he wanted. He didn't need to do the rest of that to prove his here. There he is. And when God comes in, he doesn't have to prove his presence by some sort of a strange emotion. He doesn't need to demonstrate that.

What he is in himself is all you want. And God's sending us a person. And when that person comes, you cut up a lot about it. But what you're cutting up is not to show what you've got. It's because you can't do anything other than what you've got.

He's the effect of it. Blessed be God for the glory of that person when he comes. Now that's no reflection on people who may be sincere, but it saves us from going to see him and seeking certain emotions and certain things like that, which are not the Holy Ghost.

They may be effects, but what you want is the person. And when he comes, he'll satisfy your heart. Blessed God. A lesson I have done, if I can, regarding the fact of the promised rivers. Now I know best that it is language that is in itself astonishing and mystifying and we wonder where it fits in to human life.

Believers as Channels of the Rivers of Living Water

I think we'll have very little difficulty about it if you will see that it is not the individual, the person, of the believer that has all that demonstration. The individual, the believer, is only the container.

And the Holy Ghost is in himself the furnisher of the rivers. They are not you, and you are the container. But an interesting thing about a river is that though it flows through a channel, the waters move, but the banks never move, and the banks are everywhere that the stream is.

So you have become a channel. The movement is not within you, but in the outflowing of the Spirit of the Living God. Outflowing from your life. You are the source. They are telling me that there are springs here in this state, somewhere near here, where there is a regular river that comes up out of the ground and flows out in a great stream that everybody that gets near it goes to see its beauty.

It's something that comes up out of a secret source and flows out. It isn't a matter of the soil. It isn't a matter of the banks. It's a matter of the stream that flows out. And you give yourself to God, and he starts in by putting the Holy Ghost in the deepest, secret well springs of your nation and uses you as a channel.

And then out of it is the Spirit of God proceeding out, touching the world and breaking up drought. I don't believe that a holiness man or woman that's got the blessing of holiness and sanctified gets in any community but what you can have some fruit and break up a drought and start something wherever you are.

But I'll tell you this interesting thing about it and have done. You know, we wonder sometimes how that our praying and our performing and our works for God, we wonder how they ever reach anyone. There are facts shown in the Scriptures that a person in one part of the country can pray for another person in another part of the country and never see them and never know anything about them just know that they're there and some way or another by the way of heaven get over even.

It never occurred to you that the current of a river not a reservoir but a flowing river some freight on and had it ever thought that when you pray you put your prayer on that flowing river of the Holy Spirit and He takes it exactly to the place that you wanted it to go.

You floated it there, bless God. And have you ever had an experience where you've been struggling and been crying and been praying and it looks like nothing's going to move and directly it just starts to go and you wonder how it did.

Well, just like I used to be I built some of these steamers and went up and down washed it out and threw it up on the sand and I'd have to get a hold of it and I'd struggle and I'd twist and I'd push and I'd sweat and skid in the sand and directly she floated and just went as easy.

So you get a load of prayer and you just sweat and you push and you bear it down and you struggle and directly she floats. And you wonder how it ever happened and how it ever accomplished and it got there, all right.

The River of the Spirit Carrying Believers to the City of God

And then one of these days one of these days when we've said our little peace performed our little work for the Savior and have finished our course and just kind of fold up, you know say, well, He's dead I wonder how He gets to heaven All He ever did for us was just fold it up and leaned over on the river of the Spirit of the Living God that had been falling out of His soul and He just carried Him right on to the New Jerusalem for that's the way it was flowing anyway moving toward its rest in the vast sea.

So on the resurrection morning we'll find this that God has transported our spirit on the streams of the Holy Spirit and brought us in to the city of the Living God and we don't go in laying down we go in standing up and with glorious victory and when we get over there we'll find out that the stream has been transferred to its source and that it was the river of the waters of life as clear as crystal flowing out from under the throne of God.

Every river starts out at its source goes to its level picked up by the sun and carried back to its source and the circuit's been going on the great Mississippi raises somewhere way up in there in that section of country falls onto the dust of Mexico finds its rest the sunlight picks it up carries it back again and drops it down at the source and in the circle of God the Holy Ghost picking us up and carrying us back let the sun carry us back to moisture and drop it down in the city of God.

I tell you folks we've got a hold of something. You can't dam it up and hold it but you always have to overflow a place and you can't stop it from going and all the scientists in the world can't abolish it.

God put something in your soul that'll break up the drought that'll overflow the dam that'll break up all the forces that try to obstruct it wash out all the gullies and straighten everything out and finally land us in the city of the living God where it shall dry out here in God and we'll know what it is to glorify the Lord on that glorious day.