The Holy Spirit, Living Water

Below, you'll find online worship for yesterday, Pentecost Sunday, from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Below that, is the text for the message presented during the service. Have a good week. God bless you!



John 7:37-39
When I woke up a few mornings ago, my mouth was so dry I felt my lips were cemented together. I couldn’t wait to get a drink of water! I screwed open a bottle of Ice Mountain and practically poured it down. It tasted so good! It was exactly what I needed.

When Jesus, truly God, but also truly human, lived on the earth, He did so in an arid land. Among His last words from the cross, hanging beneath the harsh Judean sun, were, “I thirst.” Jesus knows what it is to thirst, to crave the life that water gives.

That’s part of what gives such power to what He told the Samaritan woman at the well. She was tired of going to the village water source under the midday sun. Jesus tells her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” (John 4:10)  

And in John 6:35, Jesus tells the crowds He has fed with a bit of bread and a few fish, “Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” 

In passages like these, Jesus uses the need we all have for water for life to talk about something we need even more desperately than mere water, now and in eternity.

Our short Gospel lesson for this Pentecost Sunday finds Jesus in Jerusalem on the last day of the Festival of Tabernacles or the Festival of Booths. It was one of the three great festivals of the Jewish year. It lasted, as it even does today among modern Jews, seven or eight days. In ancient times, it celebrated several things: the just-completed harvest, God’s provision for His people during the forty years in the wilderness, and the giving of God’s Law, the ten commandments, at Mount Sinai. 

The Mishnah, a collection of Jewish rabbinic oral traditions about the Old Testament, tells us that one of the most important temple rituals each morning of the Feast of Tabernacles was “the celebration of water libation.” Priests would circle the altar in the temple, carrying freshly drawn water from the pool of Siloam. This was done with prayers that God would provide the water needed for a good harvest the next season.

This helps to explain why Jesus expresses Himself as He does in today’s lesson. Take a look at it now: “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. 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. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.”

When Jesus cites Scripture here, He seems to be referring to a number of different passages of the Old Testament that refer to life-giving water, life-giving wisdom, and even the life-giving Spirit. 

One place is Isaiah 43:19-20 in which the prophet quotes the Savior Who would come hundreds of years later in Jesus as saying, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen…” God promises refreshment and renewal--living water--to people born dead in sin, like you and me. 

And in Jeremiah 2:13, God tells ancient Israel: “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” In other words, God’s people had gone to their idols of choice rather than drawing life--living water--from its only true source, the God now revealed to all in Jesis.

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells us that it’s God the Holy Spirit Who quenches our greatest thirst. It’s a thirst that every human being has...

• a thirst for hope and peace amid the suffering and uncertainty of our world, 
• a thirst for life where death seems to have the final say, 
• a thirst for forgiveness for the sin with which, we know--deep down--we’ve broken God’s heart and harmed ourselves and others, 
• a thirst for the meaning that every busy day seems sometimes to drag right out of us. 

In a clip from the classic movie, Key Largo, that I shared with our weeknight Facebook Bible study this past week, Edward G. Robinson plays a murderous thug named Johnny Rocco. When asked by another character what he wanted, he admitted that he wanted, “More! Yeah, that’s it. I want more!” 


This desire for more that we all have has its roots in two human desires, one legitimate and one illegitimate. 

On the illegitimate side of the ledger is the desire, like Adam and Eve, to “be like God.” We think that if we take on more experiences, more money, more financial security, more health, that we’ll be gods unto ourselves: independent, strong, self-sufficient. If we don’t learn the futility of this fantasy when we’re young, growing older has a way of forcing the lesson down our throats. Yet we're born with this desire to be like God.

But the legitimate side of our desire for more lies in the fact that it makes us realize that there’s something missing in our souls, a yawning need, that persists no matter how much money, security, health, acceptance, or strength we have, no matter how many amazing experiences or friendships we attain in life. Saint Augustine expressed our common human yearning for more in this way: “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in You.”

It is God the Holy Spirit Who fills the holes in our souls. 

The Holy Spirit quenches the thirst we all have, the emptiness that can only be filled by the God Who made us and Who saves all who trust in God the Son Jesus from the sin, death, and futility that marks the lives of those Who don’t trust in Jesus. 

It was the Holy Spirit Who emboldened the praying, but still frightened, first disciples of Jesus to speak the Gospel Word that all who repent and believe in Jesus have everlasting life with God on the first Christian Pentecost. 

It’s this same Holy Spirit Who enables us to believe, despite the horrors of a world dying in sin displays each day, that God is with us and will have us with Him for all eternity. 

It’s the Holy Spirit Who gives us God’s Word in the Bible and Who creates and sustains faith in Christ through the humble witness of loving parents, children, friends, co-workers, and even inadequate, ineloquent preachers. 

The Holy Spirit is living water for souls dying of thirst for Jesus, even for the souls of those who already know Jesus and realize with special clarity just how desperately and constantly we need Him!

In 1 Corinthians 12:3, the apostle Paul tells us, “...no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” 

If you can confess that Jesus is your Lord, even on the days when you’re not feeling it, then you know that the Holy Spirit is filling you with the Living Water, with life with God through Christ. 

And if that’s so, you also know that each day, whatever your circumstances, whatever you’re feeling, you can turn to the Father in Jesus’ name and be filled again and again with the Holy Spirit Who brings you all that we confess the Spirit brings in our Creeds and Confessions: 

• the Word of God, 
• the life of God, 
• the Baptism by which God claims us as His own, 
• the Communion by which we abide in God and His people and they in us, 
• the assurance that Jesus, God the Son, is with you always, the resurrection of the dead from God, and
• the life everlasting with God. 

Each day, bring your thirsty soul to God in the name of Jesus and the Spirit will fill you again with Living Water! Amen

Living Water!

[Below is the journal entry for my daily quiet time with God for today.]

Look: “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come!’ Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.” (Revelation 22:17)

Earlier in the chapter, John says that in the new Eden God will create after this old creation has died, God and the Lamb will be on their thrones. Flowing from them will be a great river, giving fecundity to the Tree of Life on either side. In this river, in other words, new and everlasting life with God flows.

Then comes the invitation from the Holy Spirit and from the Church, Christ’s bride, mentioned above. Drink of the water, they say, take in “the free gift of the water of life.”

Listen: In reading this, my mind is drawn to the scene of the dead Jesus on the cross. A soldier pierces His side, “bringing a sudden flow of blood and water” (John 19:34).

Jesus’ blood cleanses of sin and the water of life brings us ever-new life with God. This is a free gift, an act of God’s charity, His grace, for all who receive it.

Because it’s free, it’s not something I can earn or of which I’m worthy. It only comes to those who respond to the invitation to come to the cleansing water of new life from God.

Revelation 22 also shows who will not be included in this new creation: “...the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)

In other words, those who refuse to be cleansed of their sin, who hang onto it as part of themselves, will die a second and everlasting time.

Respond: On this New Year’s Eve, Lord, help me to let go of the sins that hinder me from following You, that separates me from You and from partaking of the free gift of the water of life.

Today, send Your Holy Spirit to help me to resist temptation and instead, take Your invitation. Then, help me to do it tomorrow and the next day.

Be honored, glorified, and praised. Grant that in all that I say and do and am, people will know Jesus and Your living, saving water. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen

[The artistic representation of the new Jerusalem and its water of life that appears above was done in the tenth-century.]

[The image below comes from this website. If I have violated copyright law, I hope the owners will feel free to take it down. But it seems to me to well illustrate these last chapters of Revelation and I love the picture which comes from Brazil.]

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. I'm also a sinner saved by God's grace through faith in Jesus, a faith that is given by God's Holy Spirit. As someone who is simultaneously saint and sinner, I take all the blame for my deficiencies and give all the credit to God for anything good about me.] 

Flow, River, Flow

This the journal entry for my quiet time of earlier today. I met God in Psalm 46.

Look: “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.” (Psalm 46:4)

According to The Lutheran Study Bible, the phrase “the city of God” only appears in the Korah psalms. Psalm 46, as its superscription indicates, is one of these: “To the choirmaster. Of the Sons of Korah. According to Alamonth. A Song.” The phrase, city of God, refers to Jerusalem. While God is omnipresent, He chose to dwell in an intimate way with His people at the temple in Jerusalem, “the city of God.”

But Jerusalem doesn’t have a river, only springs. Clearly, the psalmist is speaking more figuratively when he says this.

I think the takeaway for us today is this: Wherever God dwells and wherever God is welcomed, that place is holy, meaning set apart for God, God’s work, God’s purposes, God’s glory, God’s grace, and is glad.

Listen: In the prologue to John’s Gospel, John says that before anything was created “the Word” existed. Pointing to the Christian’s understanding of God as one Being in three Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), John says that the Word was God and was with God. The Word was the agent by Whom creation happened. And then, John says: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling [literally, pitched His tent or tabernacled] among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

Jesus came to dwell with any who will welcome Him with trusting faith. “Here I am!” the risen and ascended Jesus says to His Church and to all who will listen. “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” (Revelation 3:20)

Jesus is the River Whose streams make glad those who welcome Him. And our call is to welcome Him with faith each day. He says: “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:17-18)

Jesus spoke of Himself as the River of living water, who could enliven those who, whether they know it or not, are parched and thirsty for God, forgiveness, and new life. (Interestingly, the most common Old Testament Hebrew word for soul is nephesh, literally throat.)

To a woman at a well in the Samaritan village of Sychar, Jesus said, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” (John 410)

To a great festival crowd in Jerusalem, Jesus once said, “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.” (John 7:37-38)

Revelation 22:1-3, says that in the heavenly city, where God the Father and the Lamb (Jesus) will dwell among their people, there will be a river, issuing from God, bringing life and peace to all who dwell with God.

And, I don’t believe that it’s a stretch to say that this River has made more than a few appearances in our dying world.

When Jesus died on a cross, a Roman soldier sought to confirm His death. And so: “...one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.” (John 19:34) Forming an inclusio within John’s gospel with the first act of Jesus’ public ministry according to John, turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana, we see that John’s entire gospel is informed by means of grace by which God comes to dwell with us in Christ, Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. In Holy Baptism, the living waters, the River--Jesus Himself, God incarnate--comes to live with us.

When we willingly, by faith, allow this River to flow into our lives, refusing to dam it off by our heedlessness toward God, we dwell with God. We live in glad fellowship with God.

This is why daily repentance and renewal is an essential part of the Christian life. Someone told me this past week, “I went through a time when I didn’t go to worship and I never prayed. I don’t know why. But that happened for about three months. I was miserable. But when I came back to God, worshiping every Sunday and praying, including confessing my sins, I was happier.”

That person’s problems didn’t go away. But God made her glad because she had invited this God revealed in Christ to dwell with her, standing with her every day and refreshing her with His grace.

The psalmist in Psalm 46 acknowledges the violence and insanity of the world in which he lived. (It’s not too different from our world.) The nations, he said, were in an uproar. But in the midst of it all, the River who dwelt with Him, God, told him, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” (Psalm 46:10)

God told him, “Be still! I’m God!”

With that assurance, he could say, “The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.” (Psalm 46:11)

God still is God! And He can be our refuge and fortress!

Respond: God, when I’m tempted to feel intimidated by the world or by my own fearfulness or by the fearful people who effectively deny that You dwell among Your people or who want to steal the joy I have in You, help me to remember that You are my fortress, my refuge, my strength, a very present help in times of trouble (Psalm 46:1, 11).

And when I’m inclined to roam off on my own, chasing some wild hare rather than following You, call me back. Help me to be still and let You fill me with hope and gladness.

And when I’ve become parched from living for myself and to myself, when I’ve forgotten that day to surrender to You, to seek forgiveness for my sins in the name of Jesus, to read Your Word, or to honor You as God, all while being stupidly mystified that things just aren’t right, call me back to You. Bellow at me, using other people, circumstances, and, most of all, Your Word and sacraments, to call me back to the River of life, to Jesus. Scream at me, God. as insistently as whistles, bagpipes, and trombones until, thick-header, thick-hearted, and sinful though I am, I hear Your insistent knock and welcome Your Son and His lordship and leadership over my life again...and again. And I can live in your peace, I can be still and revel in the assurance that not only are You God, but through Jesus, You are my God.

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen 

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]