John 7:31-39

John 7:31 ^NASB “But many of the crowd believed in Him; and they were saying, “When the Christ comes, He will not perform more signs than those which this man has, will He?” Why did John insert this? To let us know that Jesus has clearly demonstrated who He is. He has provided more than enough evidence and there were many who did respond positively. The issue is not lack of evidence, lack of clarity. If there was enough evidence for one to believe there was enough for everyone to believe. John wants us to understand very clearly that there was more than enough evidence available to demonstrate that Jesus was the Messiah promised in the Old Testament. But the Pharisees are caught up in their human viewpoint religious assumptions and so they react. We see the escalation of the conflict between Jesus and the religious authorities beginning in verse 32.

John 7:32 ^NASB “The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering these things about Him, and the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to seize [arrest] Him.” So the scenario is that in the midst of the feast Jesus has challenged their very thinking. Jesus knows what is going on behind the scenes, and He knows that there are officers in the crowd whose mission is to arrest Him. But He doesn’t let that stop Him, He continues to instruct the crowd.

John 7:33 ^NASB “Therefore Jesus said, ‘For a little while longer I am with you, then I go to Him who sent Me’.” In the midst of this confrontation we realise that what we have here is the Logos of God, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, who has presented clear claims to who He is, and He has taught clearly and lucidly to the people. When Jesus makes Himself clear the result is division. The people divide, they argue among themselves. Some say that He is a good man but most are claiming that he is a deceiver and deceiving the nation. The principle that we learn from this is that whenever the Word of God is proclaimed there will always be division and discord. There will always be the few that accept and the majority will reject. So faced with truth the crowds in the temple divide.

The apostle John wrote this about 90 AD. He has been thinking about all threes events for over 60 years. At the time that he writes the church has been formed, Israel has already been destroyed by the Roman armies under Titus and has gone out under the fifth cycle of discipline, and the church is beginning to experience its first doctrinal confrontations and divisions. Congregations are splitting. People are wondering: If this is the gospel of peace, why isn’t there unity? Didn’t Paul talk about the unity of the faith? Yet there is very little unity, people are splitting over this doctrinal issue and that doctrinal issue, they can’t even agree among themselves. So how can this be the gospel of peace? What John wants us to realise in all of this is that the truth divides people. The truth will always divide people. Christian unity is a unity, Paul says, of the faith, i.e. of doctrine. When you start trying to have unity at the expense of doctrine then you are building unity on experience and on emotion, and that is the essence of ecumenicalism. Groups get together and water everything, and they even include watering down the gospel. So now we see that Jesus is not staying away from division, divisiveness, confrontation. He steps into the crowd, raises His voice and shouts out His message. He is willing to risk violence and arrest in order to teach the Word of God.

In verse 33 the word “therefore” in the Greek is the particle oun [o)un] which is a particle of conclusion which usually shows some sort of connection, an inference from the preceding verses. Why does it says, “Jesus therefore said?” Because of their negative volition. He is saying this is response to what he knows is going on behind the scenes, the negative volition. Jesus here is going to challenge the religious authorities with their own negative volition. Up to this point is has been very clear, but now John is going to use a little irony. He is going to show that what Jesus says has a different level of meaning. Up to this moment the phrase “Him who sent me” is nothing more than a reference to God the Father. Now it is still a reference to God the Father but what we have seen studying the rabbis is that the rabbis always cited various authorities. We hold this position because Rabbi so and so said this, etc. So when Jesus says, “For a little while longer [anticipating the cross] I am with you, then I go to Him who sent Me.” “Him who sent Me” is Jesus’ authority, God the Father. He doesn’t site all of the rabbinical authorities like they want, He sites God. God is the final authority. He is once again implying that He derives His authority from God, and they don’t; another slap in the face which begins to lead even more to the culmination in the cross.

John 7:34 ^NASB “You will seek Me, and will not find Me; and where I am, you cannot come.” Again there is a double meaning here. They are going to seek Him to arrest Him. That is the primary reference here. They will not be able to arrest Him until His time has come. But there is a second level of meaning. Jesus is alluding to the fact, first of all, that He is going to be in Heaven and they can’t find Him; but the other meaning is that they really have negative volition, and because they have negative volition, no matter whether they hear Him teach now in the flesh in the incarnation or later after the crucifixion when they hear the gospel, they will never be able to find Him because they are at the very root negative to God and to gospel hearing. This a a future tense, indicating at some time in the future they will seek Him, and they shall not find Him. Then notice the very subtle shift. The first two verbs are future active indicative, and then Jesus shifts to a present tense. He doesn’t say: Where I will be you cannot come. He says: Where I am you cannot come. Once again He uses this pregnant Greek phrase to refer to Himself: ego eimi [e)gw e)imi], I AM, the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew sacred Tetragrammaton YHWH. Once again Jesus is emphasising that He is God. Of course, this continues to generate reaction among the Pharisees.

John 7:35 ^NASB “The Jews then said to one another, ‘Where does this man intend to go that we will not find Him? He is not intending to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks, is He?’” As we se so often in the Gospel when people hear Jesus say something spiritually they respond thinking He is talking about something physically—like the woman at the well. They think there is no place He can go to escape them. [36] “What is this statement that He said, ‘You will seek Me, and will not find Me; and where I am, you cannot come’?” This accurately quotes Jesus. The Jews are listening to Jesus, then they are going to say something. John normally paraphrases what somebody says but when they say this John accurately and precisely quotes exactly what they said, and what they quote is exactly what Jesus said. They understood the words but they don’t have a clue what they mean. Principle: If you are negative to God you are not going to see the truth, your mind will be clouded to the truth and you will not understand it. This is what Jesus was pointing out in v. 17 when He said: “If you are willing to do His will you will know of the teaching.” If you are not positive you will never understand the Word of God and you will never understand doctrine. This is an illustration of that. They are negative, they don’t understand what He is saying; they can even repeat it back to Him but they still don’t have a clue as to what He is saying.

Now we come to a very important issue, the issue of response to the gospel. There are three basic ways to present the gospel. There is a clear way to present the gospel where you very precisely and accurately present the issue. Then there is a fuzzy way to present the gospel, one that you usually find various campus organizations where somebody gets saved one week and they send him out knocking on doors, passing out tracts, etc., and they give all of the fuzzy and incorrect ways of presenting the gospel. Then there is the legalistic approach. This is the person who always adds something to the gospel. There are two options: people who are positive and people who are negative. In one case you have somebody who gives a clear presentation of the gospel and yet it is rejected. Then there is somebody who receives a fuzzy presentation of the gospel, but somehow they understood in the midst of all the confusion and incorrect vocabulary that the issue was trusting Christ alone for salvation and they believed. The issue is the Holy Spirit. He is going to take whatever is said and make clear the truth. We always have to remember that the Holy Spirit is the sovereign executive of salvation and witnessing and evangelism, and He is going to make the gospel clear. This even happens in a legalistic situation.

Jesus in this case has made the gospel clear and they have rejected it. Verse 36 ends events on the middle day of the feast. Then the scene shifts to the last day. Once again He appeared suddenly, once again He cried out with a loud voice, and once again everyone is going to hear the message.

Leviticus 23:33 provides the Old Testament basis for the feast of tabernacles. ^NASB “Again the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, [34] ‘Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘On the fifteenth of this seventh month is the Feast of Booths for seven days to the LORD. [35] On the first day is a holy convocation; you shall do no laborious work of any kind. [36] For seven days you shall present an offering by fire to the LORD. On the eighth day you shall have a holy convocation and present an offering by fire to the LORD; it is an assembly. You shall do no laborious work. [37] These are the appointed times of the LORD which you shall proclaim as holy convocations, to present offerings by fire to the LORD—burnt offerings and grain offerings, sacrifices and drink offerings, {each} day’s matter on its own day’.” Twenty-four hours a day they were celebrating the feast of tabernacles. This was a major party at the temple. [39] “On exactly the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the crops of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the LORD for seven days, with a rest on the first day and a rest on the eighth day.” This tells us the agricultural background. It is a fall harvest festival to celebrate that they have brought in the harvest. God has provided for them through the winter, and it also anticipates and looks forward to the spring, and there is prayer for rain. It looks forward to the coming year and anticipates God’s future provision. [40] “Now on the first day you shall take for yourselves the foliage of beautiful trees, palm branches and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God for seven days.” They built a little shelter in front of their houses and lived in it for a week. [42] “You shall live in booths for seven days; all the native-born in Israel shall live in booths.” So it is a memorial, a memorial that looks back on what happened when they came out of Egypt. [43] “so that your generations may know that I had the sons of Israel live in booths when I brought them out from the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.’” It is a reminder of God’s saving grace at the exodus.

It is a harvest festival. It was also to portray the final great harvest of history which will occur at the end of the Tribulation. For that purpose it has a Millennial anticipation. We see this in Zechariah 14:16 ^NASB “Then it will come about that any who are left of all the nations that went against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to celebrate the Feast of Booths.”

The point of all this is that people who do not have gratitude for past blessings will not get future blessings. That is the sub-text, that is what God wants everybody to understand here. Once again we see that even in the Old Testament that gratitude is a barometer of our spiritual growth.

Here is the scenario. Every single day they partied all night long. They had a big feast, the temple filled, and they are drinking wine and are having a tremendous celebration, a banquet before the Lord. As soon as the sun comes up the priest is up on the wall and blows three blasts, a long note a short note and a long note. Everybody stops and they form up in this great procession and go outside the walls, outside Jerusalem into the valley where they cut willow branches, turn around and come back up. They do this every single day. Then there are various sacrifices and offerings and more singing of Psalms all through the day. This goes on day after days throughout the eight days of the festival.

On the last day they do something a little different. They go out and down to the pool of Siloam following the priests. They go out by the water gate and when they reach the pool they turn back to face the temple. They say: “Our fathers who stood on this place stood with their backs toward the temple and their faces toward the east and they prostrated themselves eastward to the sun. But as for us our eyes are turned toward the Lord.” Who is in the temple? The Lord Jesus Christ. So they cite this and they say, “Our eyes are turned toward the Lord.” Then the priests go down with a golden pitcher and fill it with water, and then the whole crowd turns around and follow the priests back up the hill and into the temple. They come into the temple and they have erected this altar upon which are two bowls, one for wine and one for water, and they have a tube that goes from the altar down into the earth. They are going to pour this water out into the bowls and the water will drain down into the earth. What is this a symbol of? It is a representation of their prayer for rain for the coming year so that the earth will be fruitful and they will have an abundant crop. So they visualise their prayer through this ritual of bringing the water and pouring the water libation out on the altar. This is the background.

It is just at this point when the procession has come back, the people are lined up and have seen all this typology all week long, all of which points to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, they pour out the water and Jesus stands up on the wall and announces: John 7:37  ^NASB “Now on the last day, the great {day} of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink..” The point is not the thirst of the earth. It is that if you really want productivity, if you really want blessing, if you are really thirsty (also a metaphor for positive volition), you come to Me and drink. The reason He uses the metaphor of thirst and drink is that anybody can do it. Anybody can come to the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. He is saying, “I am the source of your prosperity.” So Jesus makes this profound announcement, and that makes us ask how anybody can claim that Jesus is just a good man, that Jesus is just a religious innovator. Because Jesus demonstrates incredible audacity that in the midst of this ceremony, in the midst of all of this ritual, He stands up and claims that His very actions to be the one that all of this pictures. He claims to be the one who can fulfil all of the typology. He claims, in a word, to be God.

John 7:38 ^NASB “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water’.’” Drinking is an illustration but the command is to believe. He makes it clear. What is the significance of this? John tells us in verse 39 but there is more to it than what John tells. [39] “But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet {given,} because Jesus was not yet glorified.” So He is anticipating the coming of the Holy Spirit and the coming of the church. This is a verse that destroys covenant theology, it makes it clear that the Holy Spirit was not given at all prior to Jesus’ ascension.

In order to understand what Jesus said we have to pick up some imagery that goes throughout the Scriptures. Genesis 2:8 ^NASB “The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden …” There are two geographical distinctions made in that verse. There is the garden which was to be the place where the man and the woman lived and there is a larger and more significant geographical location, Eden. Eden is the habitation of God. What is the word that we use for the place that God inhabits? Temple. Eden is the temple of God. This is antediluvian so what the earth looked like has nothing to do with what the earth looks like today. [10] “Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers.” The river did not flow out of the garden of Eden but out of Eden, out of the temple of God. There is a river that flows out of the temple and this river then subdivides into four. There is no place on earth for this kind of river system today. It is just another example of how the earth before the flood was really different. So we see here that the pristine earth was not watered by rain, according to Genesis 2:6, but by a mist that rose up from the earth and from this river system that God established.

Gen 2:11 ^NASB “The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. [12] The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there. [13] The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush. [14] The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.” After the flood when people landed they renamed rivers and other geographical features after the names they were familiar with. After the fall man was excluded from this river and from the garden. The original sign of salvation was not the cross but the fruit tree, the tree of life, and the production of the tree of life came from the water. The water was converted into the production of the fruit which became eternal life. As they ate the fruit they would live forever. So the water, then, becomes a symbol for eternal salvation.

Ezekiel 47 describes the Millennial temple. We will notice that there was something in the original creation that is also present here. Verse 1 ^NASB “Then he brought me back to the door of the house [temple]; and behold, water was flowing from under the threshold of the house toward the east, for the house faced east. And the water was flowing down from under, from the right side of the house, from south of the altar. [2] He brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate by way of {the gate} that faces east. And behold, water was trickling from the south side.” So what we see in the Millennium is a river flowing out from the centre of the temple. [6] He said to me, ‘Son of man, have you seen {this?}’ Then he brought me back to the bank of the river. [7] Now when I had returned, behold, on the bank of the river there {were} very many trees on the one side and on the other. [8] Then he said to me, ‘These waters go out toward the eastern region and go down into the Arabah; then they go toward the sea, being made to flow into the sea, and the waters {of the sea} become fresh.” Notice the rejuvenating power of the river that flows out of the temple. It turns the death of salt water into fresh water. [9] “It will come about that every living creature which swarms in every place where the river goes, will live. And there will be very many fish, for these waters go there and {the others} become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes.” So the river gives life.

Revelation 22:1 ^NASB “Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, [22] in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve {kinds of} fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. [23] There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him …. [17] The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.”

In all of these passages we see that there is a temple and from the temple flows a river. We have a creation temple, we have a Millennial temple, and we have a new heavens and new earth temple. But what do we have now? The apostle Paul is going to tell us that in this age there is going to be a living temple, the body of Christ. Ephesians 2:20-23 ^NASB “having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner {stone,} in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.” So what we have in this age is a temple made without hands, the body of Christ.

So in John chapter seven Jesus says, He who believes in Me, if he comes to this living water that is without cost, from his innermost being…” Why? Because it is prophecy. Jesus is prophesying the coming church age and that as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ you are a temple created by God the Holy Spirit, and out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water. You will be a source of life to those around you—blessing by association that has at its peak bringing others to a knowledge of Jesus Christ by explaining the gospel to them. So Jesus is saying that as a result of this future ministry of God the Holy Spirit the believer who is the temple of God in this age will be the source of blessing and prosperity for the age.

Then John concludes by telling us: John 7:39 ^NASB “But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet {given,} because Jesus was not yet glorified.” This implies the uniqueness of this age.