37 On the last and greatest day of the Festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them." 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
Dig Deeper
I realized the other day just how spoiled we are. I was standing in my bathroom, having just flushed the toilet. I ran the water in my sink quickly as I brushed my teeth and then flipped on the shower. All the while, I had a glass full of water on the counter that I was drinking from. We tend to take water for granted in our society. It is everywhere and we don't even have to think about it. We are so comfortable with the over-abundance of water that we have, that most of us can leave the water running in a sink while we go do something else and not really even consider how wasteful it is. Water is simply not a concern for us (at least for those of us in the United States), whether it be something we worry about having, or something we think about needing to be thankful to God for.
That was not the case in Israel in ancient times. Water could be scarce and hard to come by. Times of drought would be devastating, causing many people to lose their lives. The need for water was quite simply a matter a life and death for the people of biblical times, especially for the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. They came to see the provision of water as something that was directly connected with God's provision for them as His people. The vital need for water became a main concern for the Jewish people, as for most of the people that surrounded them, and instigated a great deal of prayers and thanksgiving during harvest time for the continued provision of water.
The Festival of Tabernacles was, when you boil it all down, a ceremony of joy, celebrating the harvest and God's provision for his children. Israel was commanded to celebrate God's gracious provision through the harvest in Deuteronomy 16:13-15: "Celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress. Be joyful at your Festival—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns. For seven days celebrate the Festival to the LORD your God at the place the LORD will choose. For the LORD your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete." Above all else, the Festival of Tabernacles celebrated with all joy the fact that God would always provide everything that His people truly needed. What could be more fitting than to celebrate the fact that "If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit" (Lev. 26:3-4).
The Festival of Tabernacles began each morning at the crack of dawn with one of two very symbolic acts (we will discuss the second of these in 8:12) that Jesus would pick up on and use to teach about who he is and what he was doing. Every morning a grand procession of priests, musicians, and other worshipers would wind their way the full half-mile from the Temple to the pool of Siloam. The High Priest would dip a golden pitcher into the pool and then return to the Temple where the trumpet players would play three loud blasts on silver trumpets. At that moment the priests would cry out from Isaiah 12:3: "With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation." The High Priest would then slowly ascend to the top of the altar via the ramp where he would pour the water from the pool of Siloam into one silver basin and wine into another silver basin. As he was pouring, the trumpet players would sound off three more blasts on the trumpets. Then the whole congregation would sing from Psalm 118. This Psalm was part of the hallel, the Psalms of praise from 113-118. Psalm 118 speaks of God's deliverance for His people in the past and His sure salvation in the future. It looked forward to the time when God would finally deliver His people once-for-all and dwell with them forever. It reaches a crescendo in 118:24-25, which says, "The LORD has done it this very day; let us rejoice today and be glad. LORD, save us! LORD, grant us success!"
The Festival itself began as a seven-day Festival but there came to be an eighth day that was associated with the Festival but could also be spoken of separately (Lev. 23:36). It appears, though, that the seventh day was still spoken of as the last and greatest day of the Festival. The last day of the Festival was called Hoshana Rabbah. Hoshana Rabbah means "Lord, save us," a reference to Psalm 118:25. The seventh day of the Festival was a bit different from the previous six days. On the seventh day, the altar was circled seven times and the three trumpet blasts were sounded seven times. During each circuit around the altar, the crowd would shout, "Please bring salvation now. Please, God, please, save and bring salvation now!" With each time around the altar, sounds of the chants would grow louder and more intense. All of this pointed back to the conquest of Jericho and the deliverance of God's people from their enemies. There was certainly a sense of being delivered from their enemies in all of this, but even more importantly, there was hope that when the Messiah came, he would bring the salvation and deliverance that they so longed for.
We can imagine thousands of pilgrims and devout Jews singing together, watching the life-giving water flow into the basin as an appeal to God for continued deliverance and thanksgiving for His past provision, and shouting, "Lord, save us." The last of the seven circuits is made in a crescendo of jubilation. It is time to make their joy complete (Deut. 13:15). It is at this moment, perhaps, that Jesus steps up and cries out in a loud voice so that all can hear, "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." When we understand all that is going on at the moment that Jesus utters these words, they suddenly leap off the page. All that they are celebrating and hoping for, Jesus is saying, is right there. It is him. The word has become flesh and contains all of the hopes of the people of God.
When Jesus declared that Scripture has said all of this, he is not referring to one passage in particular. He means that there are a combination of Scriptures that delivered the ideas that he has put forth, no one text has these particular words. The Festival of Tabernacles was associated with rainfall as a provision from God (Zech. 14:16-17) but it pointed to a time when all those who thirsted could come drink forever form the Lord's provision (Isa. 55:1). Isaiah 12:3, another passage associated with the Festival looked forward to drawing from the wells of God's salvation. Psalms 42-43 speak of thirsting for God as the only source that will truly quench the thirst of those who love Him. A key passage from which Jesus undoubtedly draws is Ezekiel 47 which points to a time when Jerusalem will be brought back once-and-for-all from it's exile. Ezekiel says that a new river will flow from under the Temple and will completely renew and bring life to the entire land. This is the same picture that John uses in Revelation 22 for his description of the New Jerusalem as it comes from God's presence into the earthly realm.
The Old Testament also has many prophecies that foretold of a time when God would pour out his Spirit like water: "For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants" (Isa. 44:3; see also Ezek. 36:25-27; Joel 2:28). It is to all of this that Jesus appeals as his witness in Scripture. The Festival of Tabernacles looked forward to the ingathering, the harvest when all people would be brought under the reign of the Messiah through the outpouring of God's Spirit. It would be the coming of God's Kingdom. Jesus has boldly gathered all of that imagery and pointed it squarely to himself.
Jesus uses the specific term "living water," which was distinctive from the stagnant and dead water found in ponds or pools. Living water was water that moved and brought life to everything. He is not calling them to be dead pools that take in God's provisions and store it up for themselves. No, if they drink from his life they will have God's Spirit welling up inside of them, pouring out like a river, overflowing out of their life and into others around them. The pilgrims at the Festival prayed for rain and the time of the resurrection of the dead, well, this was indeed the moment of water and new life. That's what this is all about, life. As Jesus told the Samaritan women at the well, the water that Jesus is offering is "a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The good news for the pilgrims at the Temple that day, and for us, is that they didn't have to wait anymore. They no longer needed a celebration that pointed ahead to what God was going to do one day. That day had come and is still here.
Devotional Thought
The Essenes were a sect of Jesus' time that were serious about being God's people. They were so serious that withdrew from society at large to Qu'mran so as to keep themselves pure from the rest of society. The problem is that societies like that, no matter how well meaning, become stagnant and usually don't impact society around them at all. Jesus said that his followers would have an overflow of the living water that would effect everyone around those who would drink of him. Is your life more like a stagnant pond or a river flowing with the waters of life that bring nourishment and healing to everyone around you? Make a renewed effort to let the living water flow through you and into the lives of those in your life.
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