Living Water

last week we looked at a broad overview of who the Holy Spirit is, His person and His work.

And we saw that when we first get saved God seals us with His Spirit as a guarantee of our salvation, as proof that we have been purchased by Him.

Ephesians 1:13-14 (NLT) And now you Gentiles have also heard the truth, the Good News that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.

So every true believer has the Holy Spirit living inside of us as that guarantee of our inheritance in Christ And we also looked at some of the roles that He does in our lives:  He is the advocate, councillor or helper, revealing the will of Jesus to us to lead us the correct way, glorifying Jesus and bringing us into greater unity with Him

The Holy Spirit is also a creator, and when He comes into our lives He brings us new life, He brings that abundant life that God has for us. The Spirit sanctifies us, cleansing us and making us holy. He also works in the world, convicting people of their sin and of their need to turn to a holy God. The Holy Spirit distributes gifts to each of us as he desires for the purpose of building each other up. He also leads our prayer and our worship so that we are led his way. He also leads every part of our lives.

So as we looked at last week all these are works that he does in our lives when He comes and lives in us. God designed us to be reliant upon Him. The Bible is full of examples of God having to rebuke His people for going their own way rather than relying upon Him and living in Him. Over the years he sent many prophets to warn the people of a consequence of a life outside of following God. One of the prophets that He sent was Jeremiah.

Cisterns

Jeremiah was sent to the Judean people in the late 7th century BC.  And he was sent by God to warn the people of the consequences of their ceasing to rely upon Him. And this is what Jeremiah told them:

Jeremiah 2:13 (NLT) For my people have done two evil things: They have abandoned me—the fountain of living water. And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all!

So God sends a prophet to His people, and He can tell them anything He wants, but what he chooses to rebuke them for is their plumbing system. A cistern was a large well dug in the the rock that was designed to store water. In the Middle East, as we know, it rains irregularly, so surely it’s only common sense to try to collect and store the rain when it does fall. And yet God rebukes the people for having dug these wells. not only does God rebuke them, but He calls what they have done evil. And then He explains why this is an issue.

God Himself is the fountain of living water, a living spring, and yet instead of going to Him for this living water the people wanted to store the old, stagnant water. And not only did they want to store the old water, they couldn’t even do that correctly. Their cisterns were cracked and couldn’t even hold the water anyway, what water they had managed to store leaked away.

God so often uses analogy’s and parables to explain His ways to people, and here God was pointing to what the Judeans were doing physically to make a message about what they were doing spiritually. The Judeans had lost their connection to God, they had turned away from Him and instead they were trying to go alone without Him, replacing the living water that He had for them with stagnant and leaking water that they were desperately trying to hold onto.

They had stopped following God and His ways believing that they could do it better on their own. God wanted them to come to Him and drink, He is the fountain of living water. As people we like to store and hold onto what God has done with us in the past and then do the rest ourselves. When we looked at the sermon do not worry about couple of weeks ago, we looked at the Israelites in the desert, and how they had to trust in God’s provision by giving them fresh manna every single day. This is the nature of sinful man to want to provide for ourselves outside of God, and this is not just true of tour physical needs but our spiritual needs too. 

Living Water

As usual, this Old Testament situation is mirrored perfectly in the New Testament with Jesus, who is the fulfilment of the Old Testament law.

John 7:37-39 (NLT) On the last day, the climax of the festival, Jesus stood and shouted to the crowds, “Anyone who is thirsty may come to me! Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart.’” (When he said “living water,” he was speaking of the Spirit, who would be given to everyone believing in him. But the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet entered into his glory.)

Jesus attended the Feast of Booths or Festival of the Tabernacles which took place in Jerusalem incognito.  He had spent the festival keeping low and not revealing himself to anyone. And the people attending the festival were talking amongst themselves about whether Jesus was truly the messiah. Because they were thirsty, they were looking for a messiah. And it was at the end of the festival that Jesus stood up and announced Himself to the crowds and proclaimed Himself the living water, and that anyone could come to Him and drink. The timing of Jesus’ offer of living water was perfect.  One of the rites performed during the Feast of Booths involved water. Every morning for seven days, a priest led a procession with music from the temple to the nearby pool of Siloam. There the priest filled a golden container with water and carried it back to the temple as the people rejoiced. At the altar, the priest poured the water out, while another priest poured a drink-offering of wine on the other side of the altar. On the eighth and final day the water-pouring ceremony was not repeated. It was during that time—the one day when there was no water—that Jesus stood up in the temple and shouted the news that He Himself was the source of living water. 

Here was the Messiah, offering the “water,” that was conspicuous in its absence. All that was needed was to come to Jesus in faith. And anyone who believes in Him and comes to him, rivers of living water will flow from his heart, just as God said to the Judean people in Jeremiah. And then the  Bible specifies what this living water is, in case we hadn’t guessed, it is the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit would no longer just come upon a believer occasionally as it had in the past, but would live in all who come to Jesus, and not just live in them, but flow into and out of them, a continual stream of His life Just like with the Judeans, God doesn’t want us to get a bit of Him and store it away where it will become stale and old, He wants us to come to him continually to be filled by Him, so that His life will flow out of us.

Be Being Filled

Ephesians 5:15-20 (NLT) So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts. And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I’ve already mentioned how every believer is filled and sealed by His Spirit when we are saved. But the Bible also talks about the Holy Spirit in another context, in terms of an ongoing filling of Him. Paul tells us to Be filled. “Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit”

The English language doesn’t quite do justice to Paul’s intent here. In the Greek, this command is what is called a present imperative, indicating that Paul isn’t speaking of a one time filling, but rather a continual pattern of being filled. So “go on being filled with the Holy Spirit” is a better way to phrase this or as I was always told how to understand this phrase “be being filled.”

In addition to our initial sealing with the Spirit when we are saved, God wants us to be continually filled with Him. He has an abundance of life for us! Being filled is something more than the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit we receive when we are saved. It is that continual flow of His Spirit both in and out of our lives. But God wants us to draw upon Him daily so that he moves in our lives and so we in turn can affect other people’s lives. When he freely flows into us we can then freely bless other people.

Stephen

When we’re filled with His Spirit we can do remarkable things in God, things that we would not normally be able to do in our own strength. And there’s many examples from the Bible of someone filled with the Spirit, but let’s look at passage about the stoning of Stephen. We take up the story as Stephen is addressing and rebuking the religious leaders of the day

Acts 7:51-58 (NLT) “You stubborn people! You are heathen at heart and deaf to the truth. Must you forever resist the Holy Spirit? That’s what your ancestors did, and so do you! Name one prophet your ancestors didn’t persecute! They even killed the ones who predicted the coming of the Righteous One—the Messiah whom you betrayed and murdered. You deliberately disobeyed God’s law, even though you received it from the hands of angels.”

The Jewish leaders were infuriated by Stephen’s accusation, and they shook their fists at him in rage. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily into heaven and saw the glory of God, and he saw Jesus standing in the place of honour at God’s right hand. And he told them, “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing in the place of honour at God’s right hand!”

Then they put their hands over their ears and began shouting. They rushed at him and dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. His accusers took off their coats and laid them at the feet of a young man named Saul.

“And He was full of the Holy Spirit.”

The Holy Spirit gave Stephen the words and the courage to address and to rebuke such a large crowd of important people.  He was faced with a crowd full of rage who were so angry with him that they were going to kill Him. Now if I were in that situation I would buckle under fear and intimidation, but Stephen didn’t Instead he was filled with the Spirit as he focused upon Jesus’ work.

And because of this filling he was able to completely ignore the horror that was going on around him and instead what he saw was the glory of God. Faced with a murderous crowd full of hatred he was full of love and God’s glory. Here was a man living in the living waters that come from Jesus, and even in his most horrendous death he was full of peace and joy.

Quenching the Spirit

God wants us continually filled with His Spirit, he wants us to come to Him and drink. But do you know that we can do the opposite and stifle the work of the Spirit within us? We can quench the work of the Spirit wants to do in our lives and even “grieve the Holy Spirit.” One of Stephen’s accusations against the religious leaders of the day was of resisting the Holy Spirit   

1 Thessalonians 5:19-20 (NLT) Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. Do not scoff at prophecies,

So it is possible to stifle or quench the Holy Spirit, meaning that he wants to do something but we stop it. That is the power that we have as humans, we can choose to allow God to do a deeper work in us or we can refuse it. Well, why would anyone do that?  It is much easier to organise things how we want them rather than allow God to do His work amongst us. That is our human nature, that’s what the Judeans did that made God so angry.

We want to be in control because we want things our way. Letting God take over is actually quite hard, especially when we know what it is that we want and how we want to do things. We have our own ways of doing things, and yet God has His and wants to reveal them to us. We can be filled with the Holy Spirit daily by yielding our will to God in submission and obedience to His Word. There is no formula to follow other than to allow Him to fill us and control every part of our lives—our thoughts, emotions, bodies, and actions. Only as we submit to Him and are filled with the Holy Spirit can we experience a harmonious relationship with God and one another. As we learn to be obedient in every area of our lives, He will work in us by His Spirit.

We also quench or grieve the Holy Spirit by how we live.


Ephesians 4:30 (NLT) And do not bring sorrow to God’s Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, he has identified you as his own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption.

Sin and rebellion against God’s will hinder us from living in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. When we give in to sinful temptations and worldly desires, when we lose control and do what we know is wrong, living as we did before accepting Christ’s salvation, we prevent God’s Spirit from guiding, influencing, and governing our behaviour. Instead of being led by the Spirit we become led by sin.

Being Governed

Rather than quenching the Spirit or grieving Him, God wants to allow Him to rule over us.

Romans 8:6 (NLT)  So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace

We can decide who we want to rule our minds, our sinful nature or the Spirit of God. And when our minds are ruled by Him, by His truth they will be minds of life and peace. The more that we fill our minds with the truth however that comes, through what we watch or read or through how we spend our time the more we allow the Spirit to rule our minds.

Conclusion

Revelation 21:6 (NLT) And he also said, “It is finished! I am the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginning and the End. To all who are thirsty I will give freely from the springs of the water of life

Jesus completed His work upon the cross. And His death, resurrection and giving of the Holy Spirit means that we are free to enter into is presence, to come a drink from him. God is not offering dry religion, but life! Come and drink! That living water is ours to take. This is the life that He has for us. We have to learn to go to Him daily, to drink from this life that He has for us, this abundant life that flows out of living in Him.