Thirsty for the Holy Spirit

John 7:37-39
On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus
stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is
thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever
believes in me, as the Scripture has said,
streams [rivers] of living water will ﬂow from
within him." 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.

Wednesday 16 May 2012

The analogy of Holy Spirit and water is a powerful
one reﬂecting spiritually what happens physically.
Your body is estimated to be about 60 to
70%water.
Your body needs water to regulate body
temperature and to provide the means for
nutrients to travel to all your organs. Water
also transports oxygen to your cells, removes
waste, and protects your joints and organs.
If you are very active, you lose more water
than if you are sedentary.


Symptoms of mild dehydration include chronic
pains in joints and muscles,lower back pain,
headaches and constipation. A strong odour to
your urine, along with a yellow or amber
colour indicates that you may not be getting
enough water.
Thirst is an obvious sign of dehydration and in
fact, you need water long before you feel
thirsty.
How dehydrated of the Holy Spirit
are you?


In Jn 7:37-39 we have Jesus speaking in the temple on the
most crowded day of the most popular feast of Israel.
Jesus takes a very direct and public stand.
There is no wishy-washiness here. He issues
the call,
Are you thirsty? Come and drink!
Do you desire satisfaction? Come and Drink!
Are you burdened by the bad things you’ve done? Come and
Drink!
Are you weighed down by the struggles of life? Come and
Drink!
Jesus calls and leaves us to consider our
response.

1. Your own need is met
- your deep spiritual thirst is satisfied by the
indwelling presence of the Spirit of God
2. Flowing from the Belly not the
Brain
- innermost being - hidden inner parts of a
persons being
- not about intellect, ingenuity or intelligence
- note that they are flowing out - we dont have
to pump it up for ourselves there is a flow of
God


3. Continual flow - believes is a continuous word
in the Greek - Eph 5:18, go on being filled...
an uninterrupted flow - continuous fruit bearing,
regular witness, faithful service, loving obedience
Hence Rev 22:1,2 - the tree bears fruit every month
4. Abundant flow - copious - Rivers -
Much fruit - Jn 15:5 - no - fruit - more - much
Greater works Jn 14:12
Abundant life - Jn 10:10
Abounding in the work of the Lord - 1Cor 15:58


The Holy Spirit
In the life of the
believers in
Acts –
receiving him

“Martin Lloyd-Jones in his book Joy
Unspeakable describes the difference between
common Christian living and what happens
when the Holy Spirit “clothes” a person with
power or “comes upon” a person with this
unusual power.

He says it is like a child walking along holding
his father’s hand. All is well. The child is happy.
He feels secure. His father loves him. He
believes that his father loves him but there is
no unusual urge to talk about this or sing
about it. It is true and it is pleasant.


Then suddenly the father startles the child by
reaching down and sweeping him up into his
arms and hugging him tightly and kissing him on
the neck and whispering, “I love you so much!”
And then holding the stunned child back so that
he can look into his face and saying with all his
heart, “I am so glad you are mine.” Then hugging
him once more with unspeakable warmth and
affection. Then he puts the child down and they
continue their walk.


This, Lloyd-Jones says, is what happens when a
person is baptized with the Holy Spirit. A
pleasant and happy walk with God is swept up
into an unspeakable new level of joy and love
and assurance and reality that leaves the
Christian so utterly certain of the immediate
reality of Jesus that he is overﬂowing in praise
and more free and bold in witness than he ever
imagined he could be.


The child is simply stunned. He doesn’t know whether
to cry or shout or fall down or run, he is so happy. The
fuses of love are so overloaded they almost blow
out. ...there is utter and indestructible assurance, so
that you know that you know that you know that God
is real and that Jesus lives and that you are loved, and
that to be saved is the greatest thing in the world. And
as you walk on down the street you can scarcely
contain yourself, and you want to cry out, “My father
loves me! My father loves me! O, what a great father I
have! What a father! What a father!”


The Holy Spirit
and the
believers in
Acts –
receiving him

• They were already believers
• It was a deﬁnite experience
• It is a gift of God - promise
of the Father
• A response is required


Is your experience of
the Holy Spirit
intellectual?


Vital Truth:
The Holy
Spirit is a
Person


Poured Out
Exalted to the right
hand of God, he has
received from the
Father the promised
Holy Spirit and has
poured out what you
now see and hear.
Acts 2:33

...was spoken through the prophet Joel:
‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all
ﬂesh, and your sons and your daughters shall
prophesy, and your young men shall see
visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.

Acts 2:16-18


The circumcised believers who had
come with Peter were astonished
that the gift of the Holy Spirit had
been poured out even on the
Gentiles. For they heard them
speaking in tongues and praising God.

Acts 10:45-46


Fall Upon
While Peter was still
speaking these
words, the Holy
Spirit fell upon all
those who heard
the word.

Acts 10:44 NKJV

Received

Acts 8:12 – they were born again

For as yet He had fallen upon none of
them. They had only been baptized in
the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they
laid hands on them, and they received
the Holy Spirit. Acts 8:16-17

Comes Upon
But you will receive
power when the Holy
Spirit comes on you; and
you will be my witnesses
in Jerusalem, and in all
Judea and Samaria, and
to the ends of the
earth.”

Acts 1:8

Baptised
For John baptized with
water, but in a few days
you will be baptized
with the Holy Spirit.”

Acts 1:5
Fulﬁlled in Acts 2:1-4


• It is not properly being baptized
by – after all Jesus is the one who
baptizes us

• We are baptized into
• Thus we are enveloped, plunged
under, drenched, saturated, soaked
or immersed into the reality of
the Holy Spirit


Filled

All of them were filled with the Holy
Spirit and began to speak in other
tongues as the Spirit enabled
them.

Acts 2:4

Note that the house was filled first –
2:2 – so they were surrounded!

In other cases it is a ﬁlling of
people who had been ﬁlled
earlier
Peter – Acts 4:8, Disciples – Acts 4:31
Paul – Acts 13:9
Stephen – Acts 7:55
Barnabas – Acts 11:24
Jesus – Luke 4:1

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads
to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the
Spirit. Do not get drunk on wine, which
leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled
with the Spirit.

Ephesians 5:18

be continuously filled – go on
being filled


Dangers in our
fellowship with the
Holy Spirit


Eph 4:30…And do not grieve the
Holy Spirit of God, with whom you
were sealed for the day of
redemption

How can we can grieve
him?


Eph 4:31…Get rid of all
bitterness, rage and anger, brawling
and slander, along with every form of
malice


Acts 5:3,4…Then Peter said,
“Ananias, how is it that Satan has so
ﬁlled your heart that you have lied to
the Holy Spirit and have kept for
yourself some of the money you
received for the land?


…Didn’t it belong to you before it
was sold? And after it was sold,
wasn’t the money at your disposal?
What made you think of doing such a
thing? You have not lied to men but
to God.”


1Thess 5:19
Do not put out the
Spirit’s ﬁre


1Thess 5:20
…do not treat
prophecies with
contempt. Test
everything. Hold on to
the good


Acts 7:51

You stiff-necked people,
with uncircumcised
hearts and ears! You are
just like your fathers:You
always resist the Holy
Spirit!


Heb 10:29…Anyone
who rejected the law of
Moses died without
mercy on the testimony
of two or three
witnesses. How much
more severely do you
think a man deserves to
be punished who has
trampled the Son of God
under foot

Heb 10:29…who has treated
as an unholy thing the blood of the
covenant that sanctiﬁed him, and
who has insulted the Spirit of
grace?


“The Spirit of God acts with
considerable disturbing effect. It
is part of his nature to do so.”
Donald Guthrie,
NT Theology


“The work of the Holy Spirit is
to manifest the active presence of
God in the world, and especially
in the church”
Wayne Grudem,
Systematic Theology


Thirsty for the Holy Spirit

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