If you want to follow along, the text for the message this morning comes from John

Chapter 7, 37 and 38.

If you'd like to take a Bible from the pew there in front of you if you don't have one,

those two verses will be the focus of our attention for the remainder of the hour.

The text, the words of Jesus, on the last day of the feast the great day Jesus

stood up and proclaimed, if any one thirst, let him come to me and drink, he who believes in me as the

scripture says out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Some images are very repulsive, some images are very, very attractive

to our hearts. This is an attractive image. Wouldn't you agree that most people desire to think of

their own hearts as something so deep and rich that it's like a mountain spring giving up clear water and making rivers to flow down a mountain.

Even before we get a clear idea of what this refers to in reality,

this image of drinking and rivers, we're attracted to it, we yearn for it, because it seems to imply fullness and completeness

to the point of overflow, it seems to imply coolness and refreshment during hot summer days it seems to imply moisture and

growth and life things that we just naturally are attracted to and want to be the principles of our heart.

But Jesus isn't mainly a poet using evocative language to kindle strong feelings in us. I think he is that at least but much more.

These very, very evocative words refer to something real, something solid,

something outside ourselves which would be there if we laughed at the scorn or be there if we died and we're no longer around.

There's something real objective outside ourselves that's being referred to as well as our experience. The words are not meant to make

us feel good by their beauty, they are meant to put us in touch with something real that makes an ultimate and eternal difference in our lives, not just

in our feelings.

Jesus was offering a very, very desirable experience. I can't read this without being

made thirsty and hungry for Jesus. It is desirable, But he's no mere image. There has to be a dealing with Jesus if this

experience is not going to just slip through our fingers and result in emptiness. There has to be something real,

...