S. Christ's Call to the Thirsty

CHRIST’S CALL TO THE THIRSTY

“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.” - John 7:37 THE last day of the Feast of Tabernacles was the eighth, a day of holy convocation. Why it was regarded by the Jews as the great day is not well known. In some respects it seemed to be less important than the other days; and indeed not so much a part of the feast, as itself a sort of supplementary and subsidiary feast to the other. The peculiar sacrifices appointed to be offered during the seven days were discontinued on the eighth, on which the common daily sacrifice alone was offered, and the booths in which the worshippers dwelt during the week were also abandoned on this last day, as if the ordinance, in so far as it was a Feast of Tabernacles, was now over. As a feast of ingathering, however, it was still honoured on the eighth day, by joyous processions of companies bearing branches of trees. On this last day they performed with peculiar state the ceremony of drawing water with joy from the wells of Siloam, or, as they interpreted them, the wells of Salvation. It was in the midst of this ceremony, in the course of its being completed in the temple, that Jesus arrested the assembled crowd by the proclamation: “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.” The time was, if we may judge, well chosen. The feast has once more been celebrated, and to all appearance with no nearer prospect, no better sense or sight, of Jehovah’s presence than for many long years bygone. Many a disconsolate worshipper may have mourned, and mourned all the more sincerely the more spiritual his views were. The feast is over, and we have not found the Lord, the King. But let them stay for a little. On the very last day their attention is called, in a way most startling, to a humble Nazarene. They hear a voice of authority; they look, they see a present God. Surely the Lord is in this place and we knew it not. It is Christ, the King, who is even in the midst of their tents. They obey his call; they believe his promise; they need to wait no longer for his coming; they need to draw no more water from the cistern; they cast aside their pitchers; they stay not to waste precious time in a typical ceremony of their own devising when the reality which they meant to represent is at hand; they look beyond the ordinance to him whose presence blesses it; they have found the Lord amid the tabernacles, if not precisely in the character they expected, at least in the character most suitable. The feast has not gone by so desolate as they feared; their mourning is turned into joy, and it is indeed to them a festival of gladness once more. Thus seasonable and welcome might our Lord’s proclamation be to the humble worshipper at this feast, waiting for the consolation of Israel. The proclamation contains a call and a promise - a call (John 7:37); a promise (John 7:38). At present I ask your attention to the call. Consider, I., who are called, “If any man thirst;” II., what they are called to do, “Come,” etc.

I. They who are called are the thirsty: “If any man thirst.” The figure here is evidently suggested to our Lord by the employment in which he found the people engaged. They were drawing water, and that implied thirst. By the very act which they were performing they professed and acknowledged that they thirsted. Our Lord takes them, so to speak, at their own word. He holds them confessed; they are all evidently athirst. He summons them to himself to drink. Here, in the first place, let the form of expression be noted: “If any man thirst.” And let it be observed that this does not by any means imply any restriction or reserve, any limitation or condition, any want of absolute and unconditional freeness in the invitation. It does not involve a doubt or suggestion that there may be some who do not thirst, and to whom, therefore, the call is not addressed, any more than the similar form - “if there be any virtue, if there be any praise” - is to be regarded as a doubtful supposition, and as leaving room for the idea that there might possibly be no virtue and no praise. On the contrary, the very universality of the call is in this way well enforced. “If any man thirst,” no matter who or what he may be - “If any man thirst,” in whatsoever circumstances and from whatsoever cause, “let him come.” The invitation, therefore, is given most widely and generally. It is to the utmost possible extent free and unconditional. “Ho! every one that thirsteth, come.” To say that the thirsting is a condition of the call is a mere abuse of language. It is as if I should say of the beggar whom I summon to my door to be fed, that my summons to him is conditional, the condition being his poverty; yet the proclamation. If any man be poor, let him come to my door and be fed, is surely most unfettered and unrestricted. Even so is the Saviour’s call: “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.”

It is very true that a discussion may be raised on the point whether thirst denotes the want of a good thing or the desire of it - whether it means merely destitution actually existing, or destitution felt, and prompting the wish for a supply. I can conceive a man to thirst without being sensible of his thirst, or aware of what is needed to relieve it. His lips may be parched and his throat burning; he may pant and gasp in agony; yet the fury of insanity, or the very collapse of extreme and prolonged want, may deaden all his feeling, and he may spurn from him in mad passion, or reject in utter imbecility, the cup that would relieve and revive him. I might raise a question how far such an one is really embraced in the invitation: “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” - how far it may really be said to be available on his behalf - yet it would be the merest quibble to assert that my decision of that question at all affected the free and generous liberality of the invitation. My poor patient may be beyond the reach of the most earnest call, the most urgent offer; yet not the less on that account is the call entirely unconditional, and the offer, in every proper sense of the term, wholly unrestricted.

I carry the cold water to the thirsty soul. If the man persist in his frantic or fatuous delusion that he does not need it, I waste not my time in proving that he, even in spite of that delusion, is at liberty or is called to drink; I simply press on him the refreshing draught, if by any means he may be persuaded to take it. I know that he needs it, and that he is right welcome to have it freely, and that is enough for me; and enough also for him - enough for me to make me persist in urging on him the call to come to Jesus and drink; enough for him to sober or to awaken him, to make him look and see one ready, not with a finger dipped in water, but with a large and copious draught to cool his burning tongue, his burning heart. If, on the other hand, I find him anxious for relief, and yet in doubt as to his ability to pay for, or his warrant to appropriate, what I offer, what fuller encouragement or assurance can I give than the very terms of this gracious proclamation of the gospel: “If any man thirst” - be he ever so poor, so vile, so worthless - “let him come unto me, and drink?” Let him that is athirst come; and whosoever will let him, without money and without price, take of the water of life freely.

But, secondly, it is to be noted, the thirst, the destitution or desire here implied, while not in any right sense a condition of Christ’s offer, is yet plainly a characteristic of those receiving it. It is to you as thirsty that the invitation is addressed, and by you as thirsty that it is accepted. We may fitly, therefore, ask what this thirst means? not whether it is the want or the wish of a certain good; but of what kind of good it is the want or the wish, or both. Now, this thirst may be either general and unfixed, or it may be special and definite. It may be a thirst for something, many things, anything - we scarcely know or care what - or it may be a thirst for some one precise thing, of which we have in part a distinct conception. To both kinds of thirst, but especially, as I think, to the latter, is our Lord’s invitation in the text intended to be applicable.

1. It applies to the first sort of thirst. All more or less, at different times, feel a sense of destitution, an emotion of desire, vague, undetermined, variable, to which often they cannot assign any object, of which they cannot give any account. It is the common property of fallen humanity thus to thirst. It is the very misery of the state into which the fall has brought mankind, that, having lost the chief good, its proper state, it is vainly asking good elsewhere, ever seeking rest and finding none; wearied with an endless round and routine of vanity; to be at every step disappointed, dissatisfied, vexed, to see nothing in every part blessed, to experience no full contentment. This is the lot of all, and to this lot mere human wisdom tells you helplessly to submit. It can provide no remedy. But if any man thirst in this sense, to him the Lord Jesus, the true Wisdom, cries, “Let him come unto me and drink.” To the many who say, “who will show us any good?” is this invitation addressed. Let none in such a case put it away from him. To each and all of you who are living without God does it belong, for who is he among you all that does not thirst? You may say, and sometimes think that you are rich, and have need of nothing; that you have much goods laid up for many years; that you may take your ease and be merry. Engaged in the active business of life, and taking a decent share in its pleasures, fulfilling its common duties, and cultivating its common charities, you seem to be on the whole as happy as in this frail state you can expect to be. But is there no misgiving, occasionally, of your own mind, as though all were not exactly as you could wish? Is there no one point on which your temper is sore, and your spirit discontented; no bitter in the cup; no Mordecai at the gate? Is there no feeling of despondency coming back from time to time; no aching void within, of which, at such seasons you are conscious; no craving appetite for something untried; no longing for a change, whatsoever it might be; no secret envy or repining; no dark sense of something being wanting, without which all that you have yet attained availeth you nothing? Oh but, you will say, such, a feeling arises from a cause which you can trace. You have met with some loss that has upset your fortitude. You have failed in some favourite pursuit, and you are for a little cast down. Or, if you have succeeded, some unlucky chance has marred your satisfaction. There is a little drawback which you did not foresee. You can tell well enough how it happens that you are disquieted, and you will soon have all put to rights. You will repair the loss you have sustained, or forget it. You will rectify the error you have committed. You will supply the deficiency you have discovered. But one step more, patience for a little longer, let but this one measure more be taken, this one plan be executed, and all will be well. Alas! and is it possible that you can be thus deluded, after all your experience of the deceitfulness of such a promise?

Or, perhaps, you will acquiesce in such thirst as a necessary evil, inseparable from your nature and condition: with a frail constitution, and in a changing world, your spirits cannot always be equal, and you may be often ready to complain you know not why, and to long for you know not what. Still, you can but hope, by time and a good temper, to get the better of such morbid sensations; and, at all events, such as you are, and such as life is, you must even contrive to make the most of it.

Nay, but here is Christ saying to you, “Come unto me and drink.” Here is one exhorting, intreating you to make a very simple experiment, to adopt a very simple cure. Do not tamely submit to a burden so intolerable. Do not rest in a state so unworthy of a reasonable being. Your conscious uneasiness indicates something wrong. Do not hastily conclude that the wrong is irremediable. At least listen to the suggestions of the Saviour; for you have no right to suppose that your case is beyond relief till you have tried all expedients, and this among the rest. You have been pitching your tents in a dreary desert, or in a city of vanity. You have reaped many a harvest, and kept many a harvest-home. You have decked and garnished the hard realities of sordid, commonplace existence with many rich tokens of your Maker’s bounty, and in gathering in the fruits of all your labour that is under the sun, you have done your best to rejoice, and you have called your neighbours to rejoice along with you. But in this feast of tabernacles, to which at the very best your plan of life may be compared, have you discovered, have you recognised the Lord himself in the midst of all, and have you acknowledged him as the centre and source of all? And is it any wonder, that when he who is himself alike the Author and the End of the whole feast, is unobserved and unregarded by you, or noticed only as one giving good counsel to the busy crowd, or as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, you receive not the full measure of joy that the scene and the circumstances might seem fitted to yield? that you are still conscious of a void, a vacancy; something wanting, something you fain would grasp, but cannot? Cannot! No. You cannot, until you hear, as even now you may hear his voice: “Come unto me, and drink.”

Hear it now. As you are in this wilderness, pitching your tabernacles, as for a feast, be sure you cannot do any longer without him. And you need not. He is calling you: “Come unto me, and drink.” Come now. Only be sure that you come now, and drink. You may have met with the Lord Jesus on former days of this world’s festival, as you passed to and fro among the tents and booths of its vanity fair. You may have treated him courteously, respectfully, reverentially. You may have listened occasionally to his instructions, and thought well of him and of his Gospel, as a somewhat forward and officious, yet still useful, monitor; and, as you went about the formal business of each day, you may have waited on his ministry for a little ere you hastened to draw water out of the cisterns which you yourself were hewing out. But now, to some of you it must be the last; oh, that it were also the great day of the feast: now Jesus stands before you, crying: “Come unto me, and drink.” Behold in him, not a mere attendant at the feast, to whom you do well from time to time to give heed, but the Lord of all, by whom and for whom expressly, the whole is instituted and ordained. Dwelling for a brief season in tabernacles, oh, let Jehovah, as your king, dwell in the midst of you. Behold him condescending to take up his abode among you; visiting you in your own nature, and amid your present habitations; not disdaining to share with you your earthly house of this tabernacle; making himself even bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. O, say, if coming thus to join you in the tents wherein you sojourn, he is to be coldly received, as an intruder, or listened to merely with respect when he speaks to you now and then. Nay, rather arise and come to him with your whole heart; give him the place to which he rightfully has claim. Remodel the whole festival on the principle of his supremacy. Let Christ he all in all; his salvation the one thing needful. Give his Gospel fair and full scope. Let it have free course, and lead you to fulfil the high end of your being. Let it bring you wholly to God, that he may rule and reign over you. Ah! then, see if your thirst will not then be appeased, and your soul satisfied. You thirst, because you are made for communion with God, and no other fellowship can stand for his. Then, let every one that thirsteth come unto the waters, “and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently to me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.” The cisterns which you have hewn out to yourselves are broken, and can hold no water; but the fountain of living water is still open to you. You have been seeking more from the world than it was ever fitted or intended to yield. It is the tabernacle of your pilgrimage; it cannot be a home for your hearts: good for many uses, if you turn it not to that for which it never was designed; but not good for your chief joy. The immortal spirit within you has a capacity above, and an appetite beyond it. The Lord himself is its only portion. Seek ye then the Lord, and let your souls thirst for the living God. He will dwell with you. The Lamb will lead you beside living waters. Your souls will be satisfied with the goodness of the Lord, for with him is the fountain of life. So will you enjoy God, and, enjoying him, you enjoy more than others the very feast of life itself. You expect not too much from it. You take its fruits at their true worth and value, and for all its losses you have a never-failing substitute in the Lord.

2. The thirst referred to in the invitation of our Lord maybe regarded as somewhat more definite and precise, as the thirst not only generally of a dissatisfied spirit seeking some good; but specially, as the thirst of a guilty conscience, a heart estranged from God, seeking or needing peace. They whom our Lord addressed were thirsty in this sense; at least they were acting as if they were thus thirsty. They were drawing water, as they fancied, from the wells of salvation. The waters which they drew represented spiritual and saving blessings of which they stood in need, the blessings of which the Holy Spirit is the author; and the fact of their being employed in drawing these waters was a plain admission of their need of these blessings. Some of them, no doubt, conceived that these waters actually supplied their need, and so were contented and at ease when they had performed the ceremony. Others again felt that something more was wanted, and these, notwithstanding their punctual observance of this rite, were still restless and disquieted. To both alike does the Saviour say: You are drawing water which, whether it satisfies you for the time or not, cannot really quench your thirst, - “Come unto me, and drink.” Thus also in regard to you, to whom now the same invitation is given, we may appeal to your own consciousness and your own conscience, and ask, Do not you yourselves admit it to be an invitation both suitable and seasonable? Does not your own inward sense acknowledge; does not your own conduct, even in the matter of religion, prove that the blessing which the Lord Jesus offers in his Gospel is a blessing which you need? The very expedients to which you have recourse, whether they be ordinances of God’s appointment, or devices of your own hearts, show that you are thirsty, and that, more or less distinctly, you know and feel your thirst. By every devout observance of which, in any measure, you make conscience, your omission of which pains and distresses you, your compliance with which gives you some sensible relief, - by every act of worship or of duty which you perform, with any sense of its being necessary to your standing right with God, - by your consciousness of an obligation to pray, - by your stated or occasional reading of the Bible, and your self-reproach if that exercise be omitted, - by your appearance, either regularly or at intervals, in this house of God, from habit or from principle, or because you cannot bring your mind to acquiesce in the entire discontinuance of the practice, - by every act of homage, in short, which you feel bound to render to religion, - by everything you do under an impression that it concerns your spiritual welfare to do it, - you show that you really need, and that in part at least you desire, that very thing which Jesus offers. It is of no consequence in this view, whether what you do satisfies yourselves or not; whether the want, which you practically acknowledge is, by the measures which you adopt, supplied as you might wish, or not. It is with the want itself that the Gospel has to do. It is enough that Christ sees you trying, in any measure, to draw water from the wells of salvation. Whether you think that you are now succeeding or not, he calls you to abandon your present plan, and to come unto him and drink. On the subject of your relation to God, and what is necessary for your peace with God, you may have a very convenient latitude of conscience, and you may be easily satisfied. You may not be aware of any very serious controversy between you and your Maker, nor very much affected by his absence from your feasts and solemnities. You may contrive on something of the principle of a tacit understanding or of mutual courtesy and forbearance, to be, as you think, on very good terms with the Lord and his gospel, listening devoutly enough when you think it is his time and turn to speak, that he may let you alone at other times when you think it is your turn to be busy elsewhere. And when the palm-trees are waving amid the sacred tabernacles, and the hymns are duly ascending, in the decent and comely beauty of your holy convocations you are readily inclined to believe that there can be nothing very far wrong, and so you may be pleased and pacified, though the light of God’s countenance be not at all before your eyes, nor the sense of his favour in your hearts, nor the dew of his Spirit on your soul. Or it may be that your conscience is not so easily appeased, nor the fears of guilt so quietly allayed, nor your mourning for an estranged or absent God so readily comforted. You go heavily, because you find not the Lord. You are seeking him earnestly in the means of grace which he has himself ordained, and in others perhaps which you yourselves have added. You go up to every festival, to every solemnity. You multiply sacrifices and prayers. You pitch your tent with the rest in the solemn season. But alas! you meet not your God reconciled and returning to visit you. You cannot desist from such observances, because you feel you would be worse if you did. But at the same time you are often tempted to feel as if they were all in vain. You have a sense of the evil of your alienation from God, and a sight of the condemnation under which you lie. You have some conception of the claims which God has over you, and some sad conviction of your own helpless inability to fulfil them. And the more you strive and strain to approve yourself in any measure faultless before God, and win back his favourable regard, the more are you crushed under an increasing burden of guilt, by your increasing reverence of the high majesty of God, and the exceeding breadth and spirituality of his law.

Well. And what then! “What now is to be done? You thirst. That surely is a truth, a great fact, whatever your precise feeling of your state at this or that moment may be; whether partially and for a time your sense of sin is deadened, and your anxiety about peace with God allayed; or whether you are in bitterness and anguish of soul, crying, What must I do? you thirst. Your heart is not right with God. You are not settled, not thoroughly satisfied. Then yours, let me tell you, is the very case for which provision is here fully and freely made. Jesus stands here and cries, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.” To you, whosoever you are, who have lost the favour and fellowship of God, Jesus stands and cries, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.” Go not to expedients of man’s devising. Listen not to arguments of Satan’s suggesting. Be not contented with a few miserable and doubtful drops of comfort got from some loose notion of mercy and indulgence. Here is Christ, having all blessings now in store for you, pardon, peace, reconciliation, renewal, hope, joy, the water of life: come unto him without hesitation, without delay, without fear, without doubt. Come unto him and drink freely, copiously, continually.

II. The invitation is as simple as it is suitable: Come unto me and drink. It is explained in the verse which follows that these expressions denote faith; for to both of them, or rather to the two together and jointly, do we refer the interpretation implied in our Lord’s saying, “He that believeth on me,” that is, cometh unto me and drinketh. It is the same principle of faith in double action; or, to make it plain, it is faith viewed (1) as the faith of application, (2) as the faith of appropriation.

1. It is the faith of application. Let him come unto me. But now this might seem to present an insuperable difficulty if we did not consider that he who says “Come unto me” is himself near, and that he is drawing men to himself Let him come unto me; here I am, not far to seek, not long to wait for. It is not with you as with the infirm man at Bethesda, doomed to be tantalised with sight of troubled waters too distant to be available on his behalf. Jesus draws near - to the very bed of the palsied man - to the very door of your heart. Here am I. Come. And then, too, he has power to give ability. He attracts, draws, by the manifestation of his grace, by the power of his Spirit.

All may, and through power of his grace, can come. He makes you welcome; he makes you willing; come. Only lay it well to heart that it is to himself you are to come. He says: let him. come unto me. He does not hand you over to any others that may stand between himself and you. He does not hand over to you blessings apart from himself. Come unto me; transact with me; deal with me. It is not merely I will give you rest; but in me ye shall have peace. Not merely he provides a righteousness for your acceptance; he is himself your righteousness. Not merely he imparts life to you; he is himself your life - he liveth in you. Not, I bestow resurrection and life; but I am the resurrection and the life. Yes; sinner, whoever you are, thirsting for what may meet and satisfy the aching void of a guilty conscience, a wounded spirit, a broken heart, a weary soul, it is with Jesus personally that you personally have to do. He is at the door; let him in; embrace him. Close with him when he offers to you, not his salvation, but himself Take him. Count all things but loss if you win him. Mark! - win him. Ah! there is often a misapprehension here; and poor sin-sick, sorrow-sick souls are needlessly perplexed and troubled. They are concerned about winning this or that spiritual gift from Christ. They are in heaviness, and well-nigh in despair, as to their getting peace, or pardon, or assurance, or comfort, or some sensible pledge of God’s love, or some sensible token of adoption and sanctification. If only they could get this assured hope of which they hear so much, it would be all well; they would be satisfied. Nay, but, dear brethren, are you not putting Christ’s gifts in the place of Christ himself? It is not with things you have to do, but with a person, a real living person. It is not his word merely, or his work, you are to look to and lean on, but himself - Jesus, your Lord. Oh! let this strange struggle between shyness and sluggishness, the hesitating embarrassment of endless doubt, and the simplicity of an honest and straightforward application to Christ at once, and once for all, come to an end. Be children; be little children! What questions does a little child ask, when, with open arms and beaming eye, the mother says, Come unto me? What hesitancy is there in the child’s guileless bosom? He is in a moment in the loved embrace; and the mother and the child are one. So let it be between you and that Saviour who says, Come unto me. Oh! wait not till all is cleared up, and everything explained to your satisfaction. Be not always asking about the why or the how. There is the loving and living Saviour, pointing to the stream flowing from his pierced side - his side pierced for you. Here are you, poor, needy, guilty, lost. Come unto me! he cries. Lord, here am I; take me - I am thine.

2. Thus applying to Christ, thus united to Christ, you appropriate all his benefits. You drink; you draw out of his fulness; you live upon his love. AIL that is his is yours; all that fills and satisfies his soul fills and satisfies yours. If you thirst for a settled peace, you have it in Christ. Drink, drink of the peace he giveth - the peace that passeth understanding - peace from anguish of conscious guilt - peace from strife of angry passions - peace with God. If you thirst for a sure and satisfying portion, you have it in Christ - drink. The favour of God, communion with God, joy in God, in contemplation of his glory, in participation of his grace and love - drink. If you thirst for moral purity, the perfecting of your spiritual nature, your deliverance from the weary sense of vanity that oppresses you in your intercourse with all things here below, your elevation to a clear, bright atmosphere of light and love, in which, with eye no longer dim and heart no longer heavy, you may mount to heaven on high, come to Christ and drink - drink into his spirit, into his mind; above all, his temper of obedience. Get into the very frame in which he was when he said: I thank thee, Father; even so, Father! Finally, if you thirst for comfort in sorrow, strength in weakness, help in danger, support in death; if there be any care or anxiety you long for grace to cast off, any sin you long for grace to overcome, any holy taste you long for grace to acquire, and confirm, and exemplify more and more; still come and drink. Nothing of all this can you get elsewhere than in Christ, or away from Christ. Abide in him; grow up into him; cleave to him. Whatever you need, seek not to attain to it directly, as if by an effort of your own; but go to Christ, seek it through Christ, seek it in Christ, seek Christ himself, and the thing you need and want will be yours. You cannot directly, by any exertion of your own, compass any spiritual achievement. If you complain of weak faith, by no wishing and working can you make it strong. If of a cold heart, no working in and upon the heart itself will warm it. Come to Christ; be ever coming unto Christ to drink!