SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/13/2016 3:35 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
The Invitation PT-1
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: John 7:37-39
Message of the verses: “37 Now on the last day, the great day of the feast,
Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to
Me and drink. 38 “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ’From his
innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’" 39 But this He spoke
of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit
was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
What I want
to do here is to once again quote from John MacArthur as he explains how the
Feast of Tabernacles worked as it is significant to what we read in these
verses. “By using water to illustrate
the truth about Himself, Jesus capitalized on a very prominent ceremony that
was happening at the feast. The major
feature of the Feast of Tabernacles was the booths (shelters) which the people
prepared (Lev. 23:42; Neh. 8:14). But on
each of its seven days there was also an important water ritual. That ceremony was not prescribed in the Old
Testament, but had become a tradition in the centuries just before Jesus’
time. It commemorated God’s miraculous
provision of water during Israel’s wilderness wandering, and anticipated the
blessings of the messianic age. It was
also a symbolic prayer for rain.”
“Each day
of the feast the high priest drew water from the pool of Siloam and carried it
in a procession back to the temple. At
the Water Gate (on the south side of the inner court of the temple), three
blasts were sounded on a shofar (a trumpet made out of a rams’ horn) to mark
the joy of the occasion. Isaiah 12:3 (‘Therefore
you will joyously drae water from the springs of salvation.’) was also recited. At the temple the priests marched around the
altar while the temple choir sang the Hallel (Pss. 113-118). The water was then poured out as an offering
to God.
“It was
against the backdrop of that ceremony that Jesus spoke His stunning words, ‘If
anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.’ If He gave this invitation on the seventh day
of the feast, it would have coincided with the finale of the water ceremony. (On the seventh day, the priests marched
around the altar seven times before pouring out the water.) Our Lord was inviting thirsty souls to come
to Him for spiritual, eternal, life-giving water, instead of the physical,
temporal water of the ceremony. If it
was the eight day (when there was no ceremony), it may not have been as
dramatic an announcement, but the people could still make the connection with
the water drawing ceremony each day. In
either case, the Jesus shifted the focus from the need of the parched mouths in
the wilderness to the spiritual need of the thirsty soul for the water of life.” Now earlier in his commentary MacArthur spoke
as to the possibility of the feast being seven days or eight days.
We will
conclude this portion of this section “The Invitation” by talking about three
key words that would summarize Jesus’ gospel invitation. The first word is “thirsty” and we have to
remember that water is a very precious comedy in the Middle East, not so much
for us who live by the Great Lakes in the United States. However this word speaks also of spiritual
thirst as we saw earlier in John’s Gospel from chapter four when we meet the
woman at the well. Isaiah 55:1; and
Matthew 5:6 show us something of this “1 "Ho! Every one who thirsts, come
to the waters; And you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and
milk Without money and without cost.” “6
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall
be satisfied.”
Now if
people are to find relief from their spiritual thirst they must “come,” and
that is our second key word in Jesus’ invitation. They must come to Jesus who is the source of
this living water. However not all will acknowledge
their need for spiritual fulfillment with the living water.
Our last
key word is “drink” and when one is thirsty physically they drink to quench
their thirst, and one who is spiritual thirsty must drink, that is come to
Jesus in order to fulfill their spiritual thirst.
We will
pick up here in our next SD to talk more about these verses that have to do
with spiritual thirst.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “Judges.”
Today’s Bible question:
“Could the king of Israel cure Naaman?”
Answer in our next SD.
5/13/2016 4:03 PM
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