"IF ANY ONE THIRST"
A.J.E.Welch
What I seek to say is intended to engage every person here with Jesus. Many voices are heard, many proposals made to men, many ways set out in which supposedly there may be benefits for men; but the one matter which is open to everyone here with no exception is to have this glorious Person of God's Son as the supreme engagement of their heart.
What is prominent in this gospel of John, in which I suppose everyone here has read at some time or another, is who this glorious Person is, "over all, God blessed for ever", Rom 9 : 5 - God well known in grace, addressing Himself to men as coming near to men in the acute need which lies in the guilt of their sins, to bring out the perfect final divine answer to the need. All that the Lord Jesus Himself in suffering and death and blood shedding and burying and being raised again and set on high in the place of supreme power has effected and that in suffering to establish the divine answer to the need in which you and I and every soul of man stands presented to you. Whether or not you acknowledge it when as a sinner you need a Saviour, that is true in the sight of God. Why should you resent the suggestion when the God, the blessed God who causes His word to go forth in glad tidings, is Himself presenting the final and absolute answer that provides for the need? Why be resentful of the preacher speaking about your sins and their guilt? We are often encouraged in different ways, in these times in which we are, to face facts . Many a situation has been lost through failing to face facts . In many walks of life, in many affairs of men, many a situation has been lost through failing to face facts. All the preacher is asking those who are here to do is to face facts, facts about your self, but above all facts as to Christ, facts as to God, facts as to God's provision for the satisfying of the hearts of men.
This was "the last, the great day", the great day, the day which I suppose was publicly accepted as a day of great celebration, and yet the Lord Jesus contemplates that there might be some that are thirsty. Whilst many of us have never had the experience acutely we are told that thirst is perhaps the worst kind of degradation. I wonder if deep down, right deep down in your heart, you are thirsty. On the surface the situation was fine, "the fast, the great day of the feast", a great time of celebration in Jerusalem, but is there someone there who is thirsty, who has not found a true spring and source of satisfaction. Is there anyone here who is just thirsty? You might not be able to say much about it or to speak to anyone about it in any accurate sense but deep in the heart there is a longing. You may not even know yourself just what it is but deep in your heart there is a longing. It may be so deep that you have never admitted it to anyone but it is there, and linked with that longing, I believe, is an un settlement of soul; you are not absolutely assured where you stand with God. If I have any right understanding of the thirst of men - and I can say simply I have some from a little experience of my own - that deep longing is very often connected with an unsettlement of conscience and heart in regard of God and of Christ and of where you stand before God and what your relations are with the Lord Jesus Christ. It is that which increases this unsettled, thirsty condition. But the Lord says here, just as He is saying today, "If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink".
The proposal is perfectly definite, it is perfectly positive; it is not that any kind of calculation has to go on before the drinking takes place: "come to me and drink". Is it not perfectly simple? God's heart is towards you and it is not according to the heart of God to make things hard for you; He loves to make things simple. It is a question of what He sees to be right. He is not passing by what dishonours Him or dishonours Christ, but the great point is to be simple, to say to you that this is the fact of the position from the lips of Jesus: "If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink". The Lord does not say anything about the thirst, He does not say anything about the cause of the thirst or about the measure of the thirst, far less does He suggest any restriction of what is to be drunk into, but just a simple heart-affecting appeal: "If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink". Did you ever have that experience? If you did you certainly will not have forgotten it, just coming to Jesus to drink. You say to me, and it is a right question, What do you mean by drinking? How shall I drink? What do I drink into? What is the point of suggesting that I drink? How do I do it? Right questions! The first thing is that the blessed Lord Jesus knows your condition absolutely. He knows your history, every tiny detail of it, He knows it all. He is not setting any conditions on account of that history whatever it is - "let him come to me and drink". Some might say, the Lord Jesus Christ could never say this to me. If you say that you fail to grasp just what the heart of God is towards you. The Lord Jesus is here presenting Himself to us to bring out what the heart of God is towards you, to bring you into settled blessing, satisfaction, fruitfulness toward Himself. He has nothing but your blessing in mind. Whatever your need is, however far back you can trace it, whatever its character is, however frequently the need in some sense has recurred, He knows it and He has made absolute provision to meet it. You say, Can God forgive me my sins? Yes. Can I the guilty sinner stand righteous in God's sight? Yes; great subject that is followed up in the epistle to the Romans, "Righteousness of God ... towards all, and upon all those who believe", chap 3: 22. God has a righteous ness for you, it meets the whole case because you have none, I have none, no one here has any. What I am saying is not an accusation, it is a fact which affects me as much as it affects any. We have no righteousness of our own. Every claim to a righteous ness that we might assert has gone in our sins. God says, I have a righteousness for you to meet your case. You say to me. How can I earn it? You cannot. How can I justify it on my side? You cannot. How can I present anything that merits the getting of righteousness? You cannot; you cannot do any of those things because the point is it is " righteousness of God ... towards all, and upon all those who believe". What you could never do for yourself God has done and established for you in Christ, He gave Himself for our sins "the just for the unjust", 1 Pet 3: 18. That is just accepting the facts of the situation, the just, Jesus; the un just, me or you or any other man or woman or child. God is making provision. Well may we speak of this great matter as glad tidings, it is God's provision. Oh the cost of it when the Lord Jesus suffered on the cross in those atoning sufferings where every man in the scope of that scene at the cross, apart from a few who looked on and stood by that cross, was against Him in bitter hatred and despising and murder. We live in a day when so much takes place to harden the feelings of men, but stop and think of the sufferings of Jesus, forsaken of God, the cry coming from His lips, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Matt 27: 46. Ponder those things; let the Spirit of God have something to say to you in those things, because He suffered that way, He suffered on that cross for you and for me, He suffered on that cross that the heart of God, just as it is, might be told out to you today, nineteen centuries and more later; and He went to the grave, His precious blood was shed, answering every just claim of God in respect of sin and sins. He went down into death that the man in which sin was active as the great governing principle should never come before God again. But God raised Him, God exalted Him. It affected the spirits of many of us here this morning when we were impressed with the glorious fact that Jesus is risen. The first day of the week is in principle the great resurrection day, Jesus is risen.
So this scripture refers to circumstances which it is said were not yet, "the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified". Now what is opened up to us here is essential to all that I am saying to you, that Jesus is glorified. We are not speaking of a dead Christ as a present reality. It was a reality, three days and three nights, as the scripture reminds us, He was in the heart of the earth; but no longer. His death was a real death, but His resurrection was the working of power to raise Him from the dead; as the scripture says, "raised up from among the dead by the glory of the Father", Rom 6: 4. He was seen of those that loved Him, He came to those who loved Him, He assembled with those that loved Him, He gave them experiences of the most remarkable kind - a living Person. The Christ that is preached in glad tidings is not a dead Christ. Thank God He was dead; He presents Himself in one part of the Scripture to us in that way, speaking of Himself as living, the One who is living and was dead (Rev 1: 18), but He is not dead today, so that it is open to you to come to Him. It is no mere figurative expression that; it is a real experience of soul to come to Jesus, the living, glorified Christ. The efficacy of His work, the atoning value of His precious blood, the setting aside as before God of the order of man that could never please God, all these are accomplished things. The great work of redemption on which the forgiveness of your sins must stand, the great work of redemption on which your peace must be based, all is accomplished and the testimony as to it goes out to you, to me and to you. I do not know when I first heard it - it is a very, very long time ago - but whether you have heard it before or not the testimony of this goes out to you today . There is nothing more to be done in respect of your need as a sinner because God in Christ has done it all. There is something to be done on your side - a very affecting thing to be done - that you just yield yourself to the Person who has done all. He has a right to claim you because He has done all to meet your case. How could you thrust aside all that God has effected in Christ in redemption? Could you come to a meeting like this and go away and say, I do not want peace, I would like to stay thirsty? Who would say this? Do you want to keep your thirst and let it become a deeper thirst still? You may never again come under the force of this scripture; "If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink". Drink into the love of Christ, drink into all that is effected in the work of Christ; see how immense it is, see how complete it is, see how absolutely it meets your case: drink into these things! Do not try to think of them from a distance, do not try to tell the Lord that you will come another day; the word is simple and pointed, and whilst it is full of blessing, it touches facts which are facts in themselves of the greatest seriousness. I may not have spoken much of that side but it is very true, the facts as to your sins and your need. The point today is that the Lord would just discover to you that deep set longing in your soul and give you His own touch in that unsearchable love of His, that touch that would attach your heart to Him, to find the answer of that longing soul in the One, the only One in the universe, who is able to engage us - "come to me and drink". There is no one else that you can go to, as you may go in your need as you are and draw near to Jesus. No one, no other spring, no other resource, no other basis of peace than His work, reaching right on to His resurrection and God setting Him in His place of power on high; it is from there, that place of power, and yet that holy spot up there in the heavenly regions where divine grace is streaming towards men, that the word comes from this same Jesus, no longer here in Jerusalem on "the last, the great day of the feast", but in a place whence He shall soon come in the final assertion of His rights, when as the scripture says, Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess Him Lord (see Phil 2: 10, 11), when everything in this dark scene shall be set right, when every wrong shall be met, when all that is of God in such a scene as this shall be established. But the word to you is not to think just of what is yet to happen; much is yet to happen, but much is very soon to happen. Think of what is immediate even as we are here together in this hall, the word of the Lord Jesus, "If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink". The verse goes on to great things of which I do not purpose to speak at this time, very great things, the great scene of plenty, of satisfaction, of refreshing supply, "out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this he said concerning the Spirit, which t hey that believed on him were about to receive". Have you received the Spirit? The intent of that scripture is clear, blessedly plain; how simple and plain and definite the words of the Lord Jesus are; how often, alas, we put technical objections in the way of them, but how simple and precious it 'is here, "which they that believed on him were about to receive". It is no longer the case as I speak to you that Jesus " was not yet glorified"; that was the case as the Lord uttered these words, it is not so now; Jesus is glorified, but thank God the Spirit is come and there are those who have believed who have received the Spirit; and the scripture makes plain that it is normal that as a man or a woman or a young person puts their trust, their faith in Jesus, and submits in obedience to the Lord, the Lord Jesus, God delights to give them the Spirit.
Well, I leave that question with you, whether you know what it is to come to the glorious Person who utters a word so simple and so appealing, "let him come to me and drink". Did you ever do it? You know what need of soul is, you know what needs are which no man by any human means can meet. Here is the One who is perfectly able to meet them all, and not only able but perfectly willing to meet them all, and not only perfectly willing but bringing a word in testimony home to you that it is His intent that you come, that you find that He is able to meet your thirst, "let him come to me and drink". May you do so and find the abundance of supply in divine grace of the holy love that lies behind it all in the heart of God, in the heart of Christ towards you, or His Name's sake.
Barnet
12th August 1973