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  THE PROOF YOU ARE FILLED IS THE OVERFLOW
  by Fred Tomlinson
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Summary: This sermon focuses on the invitation Jesus gave to those with
a spiritual thirst, emphasizing the continuous flow of living water
symbolizing the Holy Spirit. It delves into the concept of drinking from
Christ to experience an overflow of His life, challenging believers to
maintain a constant connection to the source of life and avoid
distractions that hinder this spiritual flow. The importance of being
continually filled with the Holy Spirit is highlighted, emphasizing the
transformation and impact it brings to the lives of believers.

Topics: "Spiritual Thirst", "Living Water"
Scripture References: John 7:37, Galatians 5:25, Ephesians 5:18, John 4:14, 2 Corinthians 4:10, Romans 8:9, Psalm 1:3, Proverbs 4:23, John 14:16, Ephesians 3:19

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon focuses on the invitation Jesus gave to those with a
spiritual thirst, emphasizing the continuous flow of living water
symbolizing the Holy Spirit. It delves into the concept of drinking from
Christ to experience an overflow of His life, challenging believers to
maintain a constant connection to the source of life and avoid
distractions that hinder this spiritual flow. The importance of being
continually filled with the Holy Spirit is highlighted, emphasizing the
transformation and impact it brings to the lives of believers.

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CONTENT
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Well, Fred Tomlinson here and in the last session, which was a week ago
when I spoke, I spoke from John chapter 7 and I feel and believe that
the Lord is directing me to go right back there to the same little group
of verses. So if you have your Bible and you want to turn with me, I'm
going to John chapter 7 and looking down to verse 37. 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.

He that believeth on me as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly
shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit,
which they that believe on him should receive. For the Holy Ghost was
not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified.

Amen. I can't even begin to count how many times I've read those verses
over these years. But as many have said long before me, it's amazing
with the Word of God how you can return to it time and time again and
continue to find something fresh and real and challenging of God's very
Word to your own heart.

And this has been the case for me this week. When Jesus stood up and
cried out on that occasion, with a loud voice we're told, he declared
two really outrageous concepts. That's how I'd like to describe them.

The first, of course, was an invitation. It was an invitation to those
with a spiritual thirst, a thirst for something deep in their own
beings, in spite of the fact that they were all profoundly religious
Jewish people that he was addressing on this occasion. But he who knows
the hearts of men and women, just as he knows your heart as I'm speaking
to you right now, he knows what's going on in the hearts of men and
women and he has a message for them.

He wants to speak to that deep inward core of our being, of your being.
And so Jesus stood up and made this great sort of proclamation,
invitation really, if any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. And
I'm suggesting that that statement was outrageous because it was
tantamount for him saying, I am the Messiah.

And to that crowd of people that were around him, that would be a
blasphemous claim. That invitation was followed by, I think, an equally
outrageous statement. He said that if there were those who would respond
to his invitation to drink of him as a direct consequence of their
drinking, rivers of living water would flow out from their bellies, says
the old King James, out from their hearts, says another translation.

And that has to be an outrageous claim. What on earth was this man
speaking about? What was he thinking? Who was he? Who is this man? They
could very well have asked. You know, so there's those two concepts, the
drinking and the outflowing.

And I'd like to concentrate most of the rest of my time here to that
second category in this session. The question really is, how should we
understand what Jesus meant when he spoke of rivers of living water? I
mean, let's face it, of course, he's using symbolism to describe
something that in so many ways is indescribable. But he chose the
symbolism, he chose to speak of it in this particular way.

And there's no doubt at all that when he was making that statement, he
was choosing that statement because it was dramatic. Not that he was a
dramatist by any stretch. But what he was describing that would happen
in the lives of those thirsty people who would drink what he was
offering could only be described as supernatural.

In other words, he was talking about something that was, it was
transcendent, it was beyond human understanding. I think in many cases,
we, even we as Christian believers, we tend to lose the deeper
significance that lies behind so many of the biblical terms and phrases
that we use commonly. You know, it was Martin Lloyd-Jones, I think most
of you will know who I'm referring to, he's gone on into a closer sense
of God's presence now.

But in his own inimitable style, he put what I think I'm thinking about
right now, in a very poignant and powerful way, I'll quote him. He said,
we have not merely been saved, that we might escape hell. But we have
been saved in order that God may present a people who will astonish the
world.

How about that? Let me repeat it, just because I want to repeat it,
because it's so incredible. It's a statement that sort of captures this
transcendent feature of what Jesus was talking about to that crowd, and
what he's speaking to you about, I believe, even in these moments. We
have been saved in order that God may present a people which will
astonish the world.

The heading that we chose for the YouTube channel that we have was a
part of a verse of scripture that was showing the way of God more
perfectly. If ever there is a need that exists within the broad
Christian community, I believe it is this. We need not some clever
intellectual man or woman, but we're needing the Holy Spirit of God
himself to somehow speak that word that penetrates to the core of their
being and of our beings, and somehow illuminates our understanding, and
enlarges our concepts of who God is, and what this salvation is that he
wrought on a hill called Calvary, and who this Holy Spirit of God is
that is intent upon entering into our lives.

Fulfilling the very purposes of God within us, even me, and even my
life, even your life, no one excluded. If any man thirst, let him come
to me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture has said, out
of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

He wasn't even satisfied to say a river of living water. He said rivers
of living water. You know, let the Apostle Paul throw some light on this
here.

Do you remember when he speaks in three of his epistles about the
mystery of God, that which has been hidden from the ages, and from the
dispensations of time, and in referring to this as the new covenant
blessing and provision of God through the redeeming work of Jesus. He's
speaking about the life of Jesus, that Christ may actually dwell within
us. At writing to the Corinthians, he's not using the word mystery at
all in this context, but he says this in chapter 4 and verse 10.

He says, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.
And just the next verse is though to underline or highlight and put into
bold type what he's seeking to express. He said that this life of Jesus
may be manifest in our mortal flesh.

Do you hear him? He's saying in your body, yes, but in your mortal
flesh, in you, who you are. What a wonderful, wonderful concept. Amen.

And so I think when I hear Jesus making this statement about rivers of
living water flowing, and the apostle John adding that parenthesis that
I read to you, and saying, in case you're wondering what Jesus was
talking about, this is a paraphrase of course, in case you're wondering
what Jesus was talking about, he was talking about the Holy Spirit. So
he's really saying the Holy Spirit, whom as the result of Calvary and
then Pentecost, men and women would be able to drink that very Spirit,
this very Spirit of Christ. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he
is none of his, but to drink in that Spirit of Christ into their being
and that the life also of Jesus may become manifest in our mortal
bodies.

That's what Jesus was talking about. Amen. And so as we think about
these rivers, I'm thinking of this as being an outflow.

This is obviously an outflow, so flow out of your heart, out of your
inner being. An outflow which is probably, and I think certainly, best
thought of in terms of not merely an outflow, but rather as an overflow.
The overflow of Christ's life, mingled with redeemed humanity.

Remember the apostle says on another occasion, he that is joined to the
Lord is one Spirit. Or if I branched out and thought of this with a
different metaphor altogether, I'd be perhaps thinking about a
spontaneous or the spontaneous fragrance of the life of Jesus, the life
that he lived, flowing out of the very lives of men and women. Men and
women who were all dead to God, who were all once sinners, bound by sin,
hell bound.

But God who is rich in mercy, he intervened in the situation and
provided a way out for us. Hallelujah. And not merely a way out of hell,
as Martin Lloyd-Jones said, but a way out and then a way in to something
that would be in the mind of God and in the provisions of God, something
that is transcendent.

Contrast that with this sort of mediocre kind of Christian religion that
is all too commonplace. May God by his Spirit elevate our thinking and
open up our hearts and our minds, and dare I say it, even our
imagination. My whole being opened up to begin to conceive and
understand something more of the fullness of this great salvation that
John Wesley, Charles Wesley called so great as well.

Amen. And so this clearly is in the heart of Jesus as he speaks to the
crowd on this occasion. And it's very evident, once again, thinking of
the metaphor that he was using.

He was thinking of a flow that was to be continuous. Rivers flowing.
When rivers flow, they just keep flowing.

And that's clearly what Jesus was wanting to emphasize. In other words,
he's not speaking about a particular event in a particular moment of
time. He's talking about something that's flowing.

That life, that Christ life, that divine life, that holy life, that
focused life, that divine life. How else can we think of it? That razor
sharp life flowing through you, my dear friend, and through me. Nothing
less than this is the intent and purpose of God for each and every one
of us.

Rivers flowing, rivers flowing and with the fullness of an Amazon river
and with the force of a Niagara river. Rivers of living water flowing
and he's speaking about the Holy Spirit. Amen.

But the context in which Jesus is speaking here is very important for
us. That is the fuller statements that he was making. So what I'm
learning from reading these words of Jesus again and again is there can
be no overflow without their first being an inflow.

And the fact of the matter is that none of us can give what we have not
first received. And the fact is that the first of these two categories,
the first would produce the second. The drinking would produce the
outflow, the overflow.

And the second, that is the outflow or the overflow, would validate the
fact of the first. Do you understand? The first would quench the thirst,
the inward thirsting of the individual partaking or of the believer. The
first would quench the thirst, the second would exhibit the life of
Jesus.

What a wonderful thing. Amen. And once again, and I think it's important
perhaps for me to repeat this, let's get this clear.

It's something so basic and so elemental really in this context, but
it's missed by so many. And that is that Jesus is not talking about a
one-off experience. It's not me coming to Jesus with my empty cup and
saying, fill my cup because it's Sunday today and I'll be back next
Sunday, all being well, for another fill up.

It's not like, Jesus is talking about a constant, continuous experience.
I don't know a lot about Greek. What I've learned about Greek has been
from people who know a lot more about it than I do.

I started out one time, there's someone listening to me today I know who
knew a great deal more than, I knew nothing. And he gave me some books
and I thought, okay, I'm going to get into this. And then I remembered
that a little bit of knowledge can be very dangerous.

And I decided I'd put my vehicle in reverse and pull out of what
otherwise would be a horrible cul-de-sac, I think. And let other people
who know more about it than I do. In any event, my dad used to have a
Newbery Bible.

And this is a long, long time ago now. And I won't pause to tell you
much about that. But the Newbery Bible is very, very helpful when
someone wants to know something about Greek tenses or Hebrew tenses and
etc.

But I do know this, that when Jesus was speaking to that crowd, he said,
if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink and keep drinking. It
was in the present continuing tense. Let him drink and keep drinking,
and out of his belly shall flow and keep flowing rivers of living water.

So the drinking was essential, so there would be a flowing, but not as a
one-off event, but as a life experience, that men and women by God's
grace and by his power and by his indwelling might experience the
transformed life. Amen. And you know, there's a lovely song that many of
us have sung often over the years, Channels only, channels only, blessed
master, but with all thy wondrous power flowing through us, thou dost
use us every day and every hour.

If we must think of a cup, and I just have one here, it's not filled
with tea, it's filled with water, I should tell you. But if we must
think of a cup, let's think of the cup of our lives being held
continuously under a faucet that is turned on and that is connected to
the main supply coming from some huge, huge lake out there in the
mountains somewhere that we can't ever exhaust. Think of it like that if
you must, but not just coming, we say, as we sing sometimes and think
about it, you know, we've come for our refill.

God's not into refills, he's into connecting us to the source, to
putting an inward spring inside of us. That's how he talked to the woman
in John chapter 4. And this is God's plan. And let me add this, this is
not a word to bring condemnation to people who are not finding this
experience in this way, but rather, I trust I'm opening to you the fact
of the truth and purpose of God for you.

And let's accept the challenge. Sometimes that can be very humbling,
because we've been on the Christian road for so long, and we think we've
got it sort of more or less all figured out. And we can get very proud
if we're not careful.

But we need to come before him with a sense of brokenness, with a sense
of need. And we say, Lord, I can't do this. This is beyond me, unless
you make this possible.

And I hear your invitation, and I'm grasping it with both my hands, with
my whole being. I get hold of, I apprehend this for which you have
apprehended me. Live out thy life, O mighty Saviour.

Amen. What a wonderful thought. So the proof that a man or a woman is
filled with the Spirit of God is the outflowing or the overflowing of
that Spirit of God in that life.

Amen. You can store up in your mind information, and you can dish it out
at appropriate times. You can sort of learn the mannerisms and the
gestures and the style, and you can imitate men or women that you esteem
highly.

But let's never forget that you cannot stockpile life. You cannot do
that. Life must be lived.

And the song said, moment by moment I've life from above. It's true that
the new birth is a one-time event. But the fruit and the enjoyment of
that new life must be a continuing experience.

It must be a continuing fruitfulness. It must be a continuing enjoyment
that we experience. It's crucial that there's a moment of birth, but
that must be followed by consistent breathing.

And so it is true in the realm of the Spirit. We must drink and keep
drinking. Sadly, many that we meet and I have met in the course of my
life seem to exist in kind of a state of spiritual comatose.

And they've clearly never discovered this vital secret, which is not
some merely some emotional sort of Pentecostal experience. Mentioning
something like that can lead people to get different impressions about
me. I'm not trying to give any impressions.

I'm not trying to make any point. I'm just saying that what God wants to
do in your life and my life is substantial. It's real.

And as far as God's provision is concerned, it's there for the living.
It's there for the enjoyment. It's there for the duration.

It's there for the journey. Glory be to God. And I think, you know,
here's the thing.

We make a mistake. I think it's made by many people. We feel, well, you
know, we're fundamentally good people.

We do our daily devotions. We bring our various needs to God in prayer.
We listen to good preaching and teaching.

We've got some lovely friends. But regardless of the value of any of
those items or categories I've just mentioned, regardless of any benefit
that is gained from them, there is no substitute for that intensely
personal, secret, inward sitting in the presence of God and drinking in
his love. And I'm seeking to encourage you to catch the vision of that
which God has made possible.

I'm well aware, from my own experience, I am well aware that we have a
very real enemy who is continually working against us. He's working over
time. This could be many different subjects related to that statement
that we could take.

But I'm thinking right now that a primary feature of the enemy's work,
so far as my life is concerned, and indeed I believe your life, is to
stop at nothing to keep you from that supernatural stream of life
flowing through and from your belly and through your life. He'll seek to
keep your mind busy with many things. Some of them may be very good
things.

He seeks to keep men and women busy in their minds. He seeks to keep us
distracted. I woke up very early this morning, like two o'clock, and a
number of things going on in my life and situation right now.

And my mind was thinking a lot, and it didn't look like I was going to
get to sleep. And then I glanced over at the side table, and I'm
probably not supposed to have my telephone next to me when I'm sleeping.
My wife didn't make that rule, by the way, just for your interest.

But it just lit up. The screen just lit up for just a few moments with a
message on it. And I was intrigued, so I clicked on it, and it was
someone making a comment on that YouTube channel that you know about.

And I won't quote to you what it said. It was very brief, but I
immediately got up and I responded to that person. And I said, you'll
never know just how meaningful that word was for me on this occasion.

The enemy wants to trap us in dead-end roads, cul-de-sacs we call them
in England often, with no way out. He wants to trap us in those places
where we're locked in with our thoughts, our thinking, our worries, our
concerns and questions, and so on. And how important it is to recognise
that this is a snare of the enemy.

He's seeking to keep me busy, my mind dominated with other things, and
to, as the result, distract me from this life of continual drinking.
Praise God when the Holy Spirit wakes us. He gives us a shake, as it
were.

A little alarm system kicks in and we realise we must not go down that
road. This is not for me. And the Lord in his grace speaks his life to
us again, and we drink his life and find peace in him.

Amen. But you know what happens when we allow ourselves to be
distracted? When we stop feeding on the living bread and drinking at the
fountain head, as a direct result and consequence of that, that which
was once fresh becomes stale, and it becomes immediately stale. And this
is the downfall of so many believers.

They allow this to happen, and what was once upon a time fresh is now
stale. I'm reminded of the Apostle Paul's words, writing to the
Galatians. The context is different, but he addressed the Galatians.

Do you remember? He said, you ran well. Who hindered you? How many I've
known who have started well and started with such promise and
experienced at some point that which was fresh and alive, but now it's
become very obviously stale and dead. And all that exists when that
happens is for us to minister nothing but self, self.

You know, this is a huge issue for all of us, without exception, but
it's particularly a powerful snare for those men and women who are
involved in some form of Christian work or Christian ministry. You know,
there's an apocryphal story that is apropos. It goes like this, you
won't find it in your Bible, that on one occasion Jesus was walking with
his disciples and they were climbing up a hillside, and at a particular
moment, Jesus said to Peter, so the story goes, and said, Peter, pick up
that stone and bring it.

And so Peter responded and picked up the stone and walked with the crowd
of disciples, all of the time wondering to himself what this was all
about. And then presently, Jesus once again turns back to Peter and
says, Peter, put that stone back over there, now put that stone over
there, and he did it. And then he turned to Jesus and said, Lord, what
was that all about? And once again, I'm qualifying this by saying this
is apocryphal, I don't know if it's true, it's not, it could be, but the
message out of it is real.

Apparently Jesus turned to Peter and he said, Peter, for whom were you
carrying the stone? And that's something that we forget, we become so
self-absorbed with what we're doing and how right it is sometimes, the
ministry that we're involved with, we become absorbed by it, that we can
so easily forget for whom we're doing this, for whom we're doing it. If
someone were to ask, we would respond quickly and say, well, I'm doing
it for the Lord, or I'm doing it because of my love for souls. But is
that really true? I may be witnessing, I may be preaching, but the river
that's flowing is filled with self, it's me doing it.

The flesh craves for attention and recognition, and this is the truth.
And this is true, as I say, for all of us, but it's particularly true
for preachers. I know that this craving for self-worth, for status, for
recognition, to be impressed, to impress in one way or another.

Jesus would say much later, I know your works, but you've left your
first love. Note this, your first love is your worship of him alone.
When it's all about you, or it's all about me, something dies as a
direct consequence.

Amen. You know, the stale, lifeless flow of self is a sure indicator
that the inflow has ceased to exist and ceased to function. That
consistent overflow of this heavenly life is both the initial and the
unerring evidence that a man or a woman is filled with the Holy Spirit.

It's the initial evidence, it's the unerring evidence that a person is
filled with the Spirit of God. Amen. This is what Paul meant when he
wrote to Ephesians in chapter 5 and verse 18, when he said in the Greek
margin, be being continually filled with the Holy Spirit.

Not every Sunday as a regular thing, not twice a week as a regular
thing, but be ye therefore continually filled with the Holy Spirit. Dear
friend, I trust that I've succeeded in encouraging you to discover that
spiritual secret of the continual drinking of the water of life. And be
sure also to maintain the channel of your life uncluttered, that the
water that flows from you may be truly astonishing to all the world, as
Martin Lloyd-Jones put it.

Amen. Let me just pray. Father, Father, we're so slow to recognise, as
we ought, that your plan of salvation far outstrips every meagre notion
that we have gathered and gleaned along the way.

And we pray, Father, that you will enable your Holy Spirit to have great
success with each and every one of us and lift up the standard for us,
Lord, to make the way of God more perfectly clear to us and minister
faith with your Word and with the revelation that enables us, Lord, to
get hold of this and to enter into the fullness of the blessing which is
in Christ Jesus. In his name we pray. In the name of Jesus.

Amen. Amen. I very much appreciate those who have subscribed to this
channel.

And if you've not done so, maybe you would like to do that. And I
encourage you to contact or click on or visit the Mackenzie Christian
Fellowship website. It's just mackenziefellowship.com and you'll learn a
little bit more about us.

And I hope you'll join us next week. God bless you. Bye-bye.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/IzBPDtmMbZA.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/fred-tomlinson/the-proof-you-are-filled-is-the-overflow/
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