'In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried,
saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. 38. He that
believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall
flow rivers of living water.'—JOHN vii. 37,38.
The occasion and date of this great saying are carefully given by the
Evangelist, because they throw much light on its significance and
importance. It was 'on the last day, that great day of the Feast,' that
'Jesus stood and cried.' The Feast was that of Tabernacles, which was
instituted in order to keep in mind the incidents of the desert
wandering. On the anniversary of this day the Jews still do as they
used to, and in many a foul ghetto and frowsy back street of European
cities, you will find them sitting beneath the booths of green
branches, commemorating the Exodus and its wonders. Part of that
ceremonial was that on each morning of the seven, and possibly on the
eighth, 'the last day of the Feast,' a procession of white-robed
priests wound down the rocky footpath from the Temple to Siloam, and
there in a golden vase drew water from the spring, chanting, as they
ascended and re-entered the Temple gates where they poured out the
water as a libation, the words of the prophet, 'with joy shall ye draw
water out of the wells of salvation.'
Picture the scene to yourselves—the white-robed priests toiling up the
pathway, the crowd in the court, the sparkling water poured out with
choral song. And then, as the priests stood with their empty vases,
there was a little stir in the crowd, and a Man who had been standing
watching, lifted up a loud voice and cried, 'If any man thirst, let him
come unto _Me_, and drink.' Strange words to say, anywhere and anywhen,
daring words to say there in the Temple court! For there and then they
could mean nothing less than Christ's laying His hand on that old
miracle, which was pointed to by the rite, when the rock yielded the
water, and asserting that all which it did and typified was repeated,
fulfilled, and transcended in Himself, and that not for a handful of
nomads in the wilderness, but for all the world, in all its
generations.
So here is one more instance to add to those to which I have directed
your attention on former occasions, in which, in this Gospel, we find
Christ claiming to be the fulfilment of incidents and events in that
ancient covenant, Jacob's ladder, the brazen serpent, the manna, and
now the rock that yielded the water. He says of them all that they are
the shadow, and the substance is in Him.
I. So then, we have to look, first, at Christ's view of humanity as set
forth here.
You remember the story of how the people in the wilderness, distressed
by that most imperative of all physical cravings, thirst, turned upon
Moses and Aaron and said, 'Why have ye brought us here to die in the
wilderness, where there are neither vines nor pomegranates,' but a land
of thirst and death? Just as Christ, in the former instances to which
we have already referred, selected and pointed to the poisoned and
serpent-stricken camp as an emblem of humanity, and just as He pointed
to the hunger of the men that were starving there, as an emblem, go
here He says: 'That is the world—a congregation of thirsty men raging
in their pangs, and not knowing where to find solace or slaking for
their thirst.' I do not need to go over all the dominant desires that
surge up in men's souls, the mind craving for knowledge, the heart
calling out for love, the whole nature feeling blindly and often
desperately after something external to itself, which it can grasp, and
in which it can feel satisfied. You know them; we all know them. Like
some plant growing in a cellar, and with feeble and blanched tendrils
feeling towards the light which is so far away, every man carries about
within himself a whole host of longing desires, which need to find
something round which they may twine, and in which they can be at rest.
'The misery of man is great upon him,' because, having these desires,
he misreads so many of them, and stifles, ignores, atrophies to so
large an extent the noblest of them. I know of no sadder tragedy than
the way in which we misinterpret the meaning of these inarticulate
cries that rise from the depths of our hearts, and misunderstand what
it is that we are groping after, when we put out empty, and, alas! too
often unclean, hands, to lay hold on our true good.
Brethren, you do not know what you want, many of you, and there is
something pathetic in the endless effort to fill up the heart by a
multitude of diverse and small things, when all the while the deepest
meaning of aspirations, yearnings, longings, unrest, discontent is, 'My
soul thirsteth for God, for the living God.' Nothing less than
infinitude will satisfy the smallest heart of the humblest and least
developed man. Nothing less than to have all our treasures in one
accessible, changeless Infinity will ever give rest to a human soul.
You have tried a multiplicity of trifles. It takes a great many bags of
coppers to make up L. 1000, and they are cumbrous to carry. Would it
not be better to part with a multitude of goodly pearls, if need be, in
order to have all your wealth, and the satisfaction of all your
desires, in the 'One Pearl of great price'? It is God for whom men are
thirsting, and, alas! so many of us know it not. As the old prophet
says, in words that never lose their pathetic power, 'they have hewn
out for themselves cisterns'—one is not enough—they need many. They are
only cisterns, which hold what is put into them, and they are 'broken
cisterns,' which cannot hold it. Yet we turn to these with a strange
infatuation, which even the experience that teaches fools does not
teach us to be folly. We turn _to_ these; and we turn _from_ the
Fountain; the one, the springing, the sufficient, the unfailing, the
exuberant Fountain of living waters. Some of you have cisterns on the
tops of your houses, with a coating of green scum and soot on them, and
do you like that foul draught better than the bright blessing that
comes out of the heart of the rock, flashing and pure?
But not only are these desires misread, but the noblest of them are
stifled. I have said that the condition of humanity is that of thirst.
Christ speaks in my text as if that thirst was by no means universal,
and, alas! it is not, '_If_ any man thirst'; there are some of us that
do not, for we are all so constituted that, unless by continual
self-discipline, and self-suppression, and self-evolution, the lower
desires will overgrow the loftier ones, and kill them, as weeds will
some precious crop. And some of you are so much taken up with
gratifying the lowest necessities and longings of your nature, that you
leave the highest all uncared for, and the effect of that is that the
unsatisfied longing avenges itself, for your neglect of it, by infusing
unrest and dissatisfaction into what else would satisfy the lowest. 'He
that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that
loveth abundance with increase,' but he that loves God will be
satisfied with less than silver, and will continue satisfied when
decrease comes. If you would suck the last drop of sweetness out of the
luscious purple grapes that grow on earth, you must have the appetite
after the best things, recognised, and ministered to, and satisfied.
And when we are satisfied with God, we shall 'have learnt in whatsoever
state we are, therewith to be self-sufficing.' But, as I say, the
highest desires are neglected, and the lowest are cockered and
pampered, and so the taste is depraved. Many of you have no wish for
God, and no desire after high and noble things, and are perfectly
contented to browse on the low levels, or to feed on 'the husks that
the swine do eat,' whilst all the while the loftiest of your powers is
starving within. Brethren, before we can come to the Rock that yields
the water, there must be the sense of need. Do you know what it is that
you want? Have you any desire after righteousness and purity and
nobleness, and the vision of God flaming in upon the pettinesses and
commonplaces of this life which is 'sound and fury, signifying
nothing,' and is trivial in all its pretended greatness, unless you
have learned that you need God most of all, and will never be at rest
till you have Him?