Matt Chandler - A Home in Jesus

Well, good morning! If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab those. We’re going to be in John chapter 7; that’s going to be our anchor text, and from there, we’re going to look at some passages in chapter 8. My hope today during our time together is to examine chapters 7 and 8 and see what’s going on in the life of Jesus as we reflect on who He is and enter into the promises that He has for us. I’m excited to dive into these two passages! If you have commentaries on a computer program or on your shelves, they could be referred to as the debate chapters or the conflict chapters. What’s happening in chapters 7 and 8 are these back-and-forth debates between the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the religious rulers of the day, and Jesus. Jesus is redefining success; He is confronting legalism, elitism, and secularism. Then He rounds it out by confronting classism. During all this, His disciples, who are growing fragile as animosity builds against Jesus Christ, hear Him make this unbelievable promise at the feast. That promise will be our focus, and then we will look at how that promise plays itself out practically in our time together today.

So if you have your Bibles, turn to John chapter 7. We’re going to pick it up in verse 37. On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, «If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’» Here’s the promise! There are a couple of things I want to point out: Jesus is standing up and crying out; there’s an angst in His soul, a zeal in His heart. What is He crying out? He’s saying, «If you’re thirsty, if you’re longing for more, if you know that the life you’re currently living is not what you were designed for, if you have an inkling that there’s more, if you’re thirsty, then come to Me.»

Now listen to the promise, because this promise has been lost on many of us for a long time, and I hope by the grace of God to start rescuing some of it today. He says, «If you will believe in Me, as the Scriptures have said, then what happens?» Look back at the passage: «Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.» This is not the first time we’ve heard this phrase, «rivers of living water.» We heard it in John chapter 4 when Jesus spoke to the woman at the well and mentioned springs of living water bursting forth from her soul. This woman was ashamed; her life was a wreck. Jesus says, «If you come to Me and drink the water that I have, then springs of living water will burst forth.» Now in this passage, they will flow—streams of living water will flow from our hearts.

Now here’s what we know about this: in verse 39, it becomes clear that this is a reference to the Holy Spirit; to believe will mean the Holy Spirit. I’m not reading into the passage; verse 39 tells us that this stream of living water flowing from us is the Holy Spirit, and it’s not just a one-time gift. The Holy Spirit will flow through us over and over again; we never lose Him—it’s just that the water builds and flows from us.

The point I want to emphasize today, which we will explore practically, is that for many of us, our Christian life—not all, but for many—is marked more by defeat than by victory. Here’s what I mean: You cannot out-preach or over-preach the cross of Jesus Christ and His atoning work for our sins. If I preached that every Sunday for the rest of my life, it would not be a waste of time. But Jesus is not just promising the forgiveness of sins; He is promising life that bursts forth from the innermost parts of who we are and flows for all of our days.

I think there’s a way that moralistic deism seeps into the life of the believer. As much as we want to say, «I hate that, ” or „I’m not trying to earn it; I’m resting in what was freely given to me by God in Christ, ” our lives are often marked by, „Oh, I blew it again; let me go ask for forgiveness.“ Then, „Oh man, I blew it again; let me go ask for forgiveness.“ It becomes a cycle rather than being marked by a heart transformed by the living water that Jesus promises.