On Line Bible Study - For the Week May 21-27, 2012

Lesson 537

John 7:37-52

You can see the entire passage by clicking on the link above.  We are going to focus on the following verses:

John 7:   ³⁷ On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. ³⁸ Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” ³⁹ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

 The "festival" is The Feast of Tabernacles.  This was an agrarian feast originally, and its sacredness was intensified by its association with the dedication of Solomon's Temple.  The feast also becomes connected to the 'triumphant day of the Lord' in Zechariah 9 - 14, perhaps because of the verse in Zechariah 10:1 referencing the prayers for spring rains.

The Feast of Tabernacles was celebrated for seven days.  Each day in the morning a procession would go to the fountain of Gihon - the fountain which supplied the waters to the pool of Siloam.  These came to symbolize the 'waters from the well of salvation (Isaiah 12:3).  A pitcher would be filled with the water, and then the procession would go back up to the Temple through the Water Gate.  As members of the procession walked, they carried two symbols with them - in their right hand, myrtle and twigs to recollect the construction of the huts, and in their left hand a lemon or citron as a sign of the harvest.  The water would be poured in a funnel at the altar.  On the seventh day of the celebration the procession would march around the altar seven times.  (Raymond Brown, Anchor Bible Commentary on the Gospel According to John I-XII.)

Prayers for rain, the anticipation of the 'coming day of the Lord", reverence for the Temple - it is in this context - on the last and greatest day of the festival - that Jesus stood and cried out - Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink...

As you read the entire passage under consideration we discover that not everyone was enamored of Christ or receptive to his message - that "rivers of living water" would flow.  Is it true - can it be true - that Jesus provides what we truly need for life from the temple of his body?  The 'living water' is the Spirit.

As John's Gospel presents it, Jesus is the "Festival" we have all been waiting for!