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.] 

Quenching Our Thirst for "It"

John 7:37-39
In The Silver Chair, one of the books that make up The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, there’s a scene in which a girl named Jill Pole, who is from this world, is mysteriously transported to an alternative universe called Narnia and there, happens on a lion. He’s sitting by a pool of water from which she desperately wants a drink. But seeing the lion, she simply stands, paralyzed by fear and indecision.

“If you’re thirsty, you may drink,” a voice tells her. It was a voice, as Lewis says, “deeper, wilder...stronger” than any she had ever heard, “a sort of heavy, golden voice.” She wondered where the voice had come from.

Then it said again, “If you are thirsty, come and drink.” Now she realized that it was the enormous lion who was speaking to her. Frozen in fear, she said nothing.

“Are you not thirsty?” the lion pressed. “I’m dying of thirst,” she told him. “Then drink,” he said.

After considering matters, Jill thought that she didn’t dare go any nearer the lion or the stream. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream,” she said. And then the lion told her, “There is no other stream.”

In Lewis’ Narnia, Aslan is a figure of Christ, the King of kings, sent by the Emperor Over the Sea, a figure for God the Father. In this scene, Lewis gives us a picture of how God the Son and God the Holy Spirit work in our lives to give us faith and to give us life that can be found nowhere else.

You see, we’re all born with a thirst for God and for the life that only God can give.

That’s true whether we know it or not.

One pastor calls this our human desire for it, that unsettled feeling that tells us that there’s more to life than existing from day to day.

We’re born craving it and sometimes we think we’ve found it in new fidget spinners, new spouses, new friends, new cars, new homes, new jobs, new boats, new hobbies.

There’s nothing wrong with any of these things. Everything in this world, including every human relationship, can be wonderful blessings.

But none of them is it. None fill our thirst for living water.

Saint Augustine, who spent many years searching for it in his study of philosophy and in illicit sexual relations before coming to faith in Christ, spoke of our common search for it in a well-known prayer: “You have made us restless for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in You.”

One of the psalmists speak of the same thing when he writes: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” (Pslam 42:1-2)

What is it then? What can quench our thirsty souls? 

It’s the very life of God, His breath, His Holy Spirit. 

It was the Spirit Who God the Father breathed into us to first give human beings life: “...the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). The perfect life of God filled the human frame.

Of course, that life became distorted, marred, perverted after humanity fell into sin, bringing deterioration, death, broken relationships and a constant thirst for it.

Many today are so steeped in the sin and death of this world and all the habitual lifestyles we adopt to approximate what we’re looking for that it doesn’t dawn on them that what we’re looking for can’t be found in things filled with the death, sin, and corruption of this fallen universe.

Still, for many, the search continues. Paul told a crowd in Athens that searched for it in all manner of little gods, godlets, and lifestyles: “From one man [Adam] he [God] made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.” (Acts 17:26-27)

Then, Paul revealed to the crowd that He knew about what they were looking for: A relationship with Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, Who died and rose to bring forgiveness and new, everlasting life to all who believed in Him. This Jesus could fill them with the Holy Spirit, with the life human beings lost at Eden, the life that they longed for. Only Jesus could give them it. Only Jesus can give it to you and me.

When, in Lewis’s story, Jill Pole sees the water that could quench the thirst from which she’s dying, she wants it more than anything. But to get to it, she must pass through Aslan. And so she hesitates.

When I was starting a new congregation in the Cincinnati area, I went door to door to introduce the church to the community. One house I stopped at was a large one set on a golf course. A young couple invited me in. They offered me water and I sat in their living room for a visit.

It turned out that they were both preachers’ kids. They were knowledgeable about God and the Bible. They had both been through divorces. I asked them how long they’d been married. They weren’t married.

“I know that’s wrong,” the man told me. I didn’t deny it. “So, how do you feel about God?” I asked them. “I love God,” the man told me, “But He’s just not part of our life right now. I want God in my life. We both do.” I asked him if he would like to do something about that desire, because, I assured them, “God wants you even more than you want Him.” They said, “Not now.”

That’s one of the most tragic conversations in which I’ve ever been involved. Here was a couple who knew what it was: life from God, life with God, freedom from sin, the power of the Holy Spirit to live in community with God forever, through faith in Jesus Christ. They hesitated. They said they weren’t ready yet. They were too busy with their sin to let God in just then.

Folks, the time to get ready, the time to let Jesus in, the time to drink the living water that Jesus can give to us is always now!

In today’s short Gospel lesson for this Pentecost Sunday, Jesus is speaking to a crowd in Jerusalem during the feast of booths or feast of tabernacles. It occurred each year seven weeks after Passover and was celebrated during the harvest season. During this season, it was common for Jews to erect booths or tabernacles in their fields in remembrance of the temporary shelters their ancestors used during the forty year Old Testament exodus. Jesus is in Jerusalem to teach and to make an amazing promise.

Take a look at the lesson, please. Verse 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.’”

I love the fact that Jesus spoke in a loud voice!

The world wants to turn Jesus into a compliant, namby-pamby dishrag, a weakling who will go along with us and not stand in our ways when we go wrong. But Jesus isn’t putty in our hands!

Revelation 5:5 calls Jesus, “the lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David,” Who by His death and resurrection, triumphs over His enemies--our enemies of sin, death, and darkness--to bring us life.

Last week, you’ll remember, Jesus told us, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Here, He tells us--in a loud voice--that if we want the life of God, the Holy Spirit bringing us, as we confess each Sunday in the Creed, “the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting,” if we want it, if we want to quench our thirst for what only God can give us, we must come to Jesus Christ. There is no other stream!

We can’t steal this living water from God. We can’t get it by being good people, or by dabbling in religion. All roads don’t lead to God or the life we long for. Jesus is the only road.

That may fill us with fear, betting our whole eternity on surrender to a Savior Who commands us to leave our sins and our most cherished selfish dreams behind.

And yet, we know that Jesus isn’t just the Lion of Judah, He is also “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).

If we are thirsty for the life that God only gives through Christ, we must come to Jesus!

Verse 38: “‘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.”

Today, six Living Water young people will affirm their desire to live in the covenant of their Baptism. They are saying that, for themselves and not because their parents brought (or dragged) them to church, they believe in Jesus Christ, that they don’t want to seek life anywhere else.

Of course, they haven’t formed these intentions on their own. They’ve been influenced by their families and this congregation.

But more than that, the Holy Spirit, unleashed in their lives when they were baptized, has drawn them to Jesus, filled them with life, caused them to realize that the holes in their souls--and the holes in every human soul--can only be filled by the sinless, crucified, risen, and ascended Jesus Christ.

As Paul reminds us: “...no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3).

And it is this same Holy Spirit Who can sustain them--and all of us--through the ups and downs of this life, quenching our thirsty souls through God’s Word, the witness of the resurrection, and the fellowship of the Church.

It is only when God helps and guides us that we can follow through on our good intentions of following Jesus always.

 Jesus once said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6).

It’s Jesus’ promise, certified by His death and resurrection, that if we will look only to Him to fill that need for life, peace, hope, and relationship that only He can fill, we will be filled to overflowing.

He will send His Holy Spirit and we will have forgiveness and life, “pressed down, shaken together and running over” (Luke 6:38) as Jesus says.

That’s what He promises all who trust in Him on this Pentecost Sunday and every day we dare to affirm, by word and by living, our total trust in Him. May this be our way of life. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

A Deluge of Grace, Grace, GRACE!

Here are reflections from my morning quiet time with God today. To see how I approach quiet time, see here.

Look: “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:3-5, NIV)

“And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.” (Romans 5:3-5, The Message)

“Deep and wide / Deep and wide / There’s a fountain flowing deep and wide.” It’s the words of that old Sunday School and camp song that come to mind as I read these amazing words of Paul, beautifully rendered by Peterson in The Message.

In the first two verses of Romans, chapter 5, Paul comes to one of his important therefore statements: “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.”

When I compare my life and how I conduct it to the Law of God, I fall short (Romans 3:23). As we confess on Sunday mornings, “We have not loved You with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” But, just like Abraham, the patriarch of Biblical faith, Paul says, we are accounted righteous by God through faith in God, Who has now revealed Himself to all the world--Jews and Gentiles--through Jesus, true God and true man. God graciously offered His Son for us so that all who believe in Jesus--Jew and Gentile--share in His victory over death and enjoy eternal reconciliation with God (Romans 5:10).

Paul says that I not only can now boast in my hope of a life of perfect righteousness beyond my grave because of Jesus and my faith in Him, I can even boast about Jesus in the midst of my sufferings.

Why? Because, God forges my character and fits me for authentic human living in this world and in eternity in the midst of suffering as I keep following Jesus!

This results in hope that doesn’t disappoint or put me to shame.

When I go through the worst that this life dispenses, when I experience God’s grace and forgiveness even when I am my own worst enemy and the creator of my own heartaches, I know that God is real. I experience, intimately and first-hand, that God’s grace is real. I know that Jesus’ death and resurrection were for me too.

This is how I have experienced You, God: As the gracious Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Who still loves me, still hears my prayers, still stands by me when I have failed You and I turn back, when I suffer and I rely on You.

It’s through the dark times, as we cling to Your hand, that deeper peace, deeper hope, deeper certainty, and deeper faith are won.

I have come to realize that You love me in spite of me--”...at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). Wow!

Listen: All of which is why, Peterson’s rendering in The Message caused me to stand up and take deeper notice of Your Word in Romans 5:3-5 today.

When my suffering--real, imagined, or attributable to the devil, the world, or my sinful self--leads me to a deeper walk with You and often in my life, hopelessness is dealt a fatal blow.

Grace gets the last word over my sin.

Life gets the final say over death.

I find myself, as Peterson renders Paul’s letter to the Romans “...standing where [I] always hoped [I] might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting [my] praise.”

When I trust in You, You set me free to be who You made me to be--Your son--and do what I was made for--reflect Your glory and goodness.

You grant a life-giving tidal wave of living water, slaking my troubled soul with grace. Grace. Grace. Grace! GRACE! 

When I connect with You each day, I find that taking in Your grace and love is far more challenging than the proverbial drinking water from a fire hose. It’s like trying to take in an ocean of fresh water in one gulp. You bring a deluge of grace that Paul talks about in Romans 5:5, observing (in Peterson’s rendering): “...we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!” (A particular challenge for us who are simple jars of clay or paper cups, 2 Corinthians 4:7.)

And, amazingly, that’s in the midst of suffering, as Your grace uses that suffering to forge our characters and deepen our hope. (In the Peterson rendering, “alert expectancy,” is hope, a fantastic way of portraying Christian hope.)

As You daily prove Your faithfulness to me, Lord, I find myself increasingly empowered to live today and am given to standing on tip-toes in alert expectancy of what You are going to do today, tomorrow, and in eternity.

I have often disappointed You, others, and myself. I have sinned. I am a sinner who sins. But when I place my life in Your hands, the hope that You create within me never puts me to shame (Romans 5:5). I, by my actions and thoughts, am the only one who can shame Mark Daniels. But, I thank You, God, that my shame need not define my life nor my eternity. When I trust in You--Peterson renders it as opening the door to You--my shame is erased. My sins are forgiven. You give me new starts. (Romans 5:2, The Message)

Respond: Thank You, God, for undeserved grace. Thank You, Christ, for setting me free from sin and death. Thank You, Holy Spirit, for incessantly pounding through this thick skull of mine that my life is not about what I do, it’s about what You, the three-in-One God have done and are doing for me, doing in me, and my trust in You. I surrender. Now let me bathe in Your deluge of grace. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]