37 On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood up and called out in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said: ‘Streams of living water will flow from within him.’” 39 He was speaking about the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. For the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.

40 On hearing these words, some of the people said, “This is truly the Prophet.”

41 Others declared, “This is the Christ.”

But still others asked, “How can the Christ come from Galilee? 42 Doesn’t the Scripture say that the Christ will come from the line of David and from Bethlehem, the village where David lived? ”

43 So there was division in the crowd because of Jesus. 44 Some of them wanted to seize Him, but no one laid a hand on Him.

REFLECTIONS

Written by Helen Mitry

Over the past few weeks at Growth Group we have been studying Jesus through the lens of the Old Testament and seeing how every promise God made points towards him. Today in John’s Gospel we also see how the Old Testament celebrations and rituals were fulfilled in Jesus. It took me a while to write this devotion as there was a lot of cultural context to consider. However after doing some digging, it made sense!

We are told that it is the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles for the Jews. A “tabernacle” was a kind of tent, so can you guess what they did to celebrate this festival? Each family would make their own little temporary shelter and camp out for the week! This sounds like a Gus Cameron type of celebration. This festival reminded them of God’s goodness to Israel when they had camped in the wilderness for 40 years after he rescued them from Egypt.

Another important theme in this celebration is water, because if you were stranded in the wilderness you would definitely want water! For 7 days they would pour water from the Pool of Siloam on the altar to remind each other that God had provided them with water in the desert. (The Pool of Siloam will feature again when Jesus heals a blind man in chapter 9.)

In today’s passage Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.” I don’t think it was a coincidence that Jesus chose to preach this message on this day, at this celebration and to this crowd. “Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” This is Jesus talking about the Holy Spirit. Jesus is calling the crowd to him – and not just that crowd back them. He is calling us as well. We can come to Jesus thirsty, and he will satisfy our deepest need. We only need to believe in him to receive the Holy Spirit. Come to Jesus, the only source of living water.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Helen is a member of our Fairfield Evening congregation.