John 7:37-53
Title: Jesus
is the Living Water.
Analysis:
Now
it was the last day of the feast and Christ makes one final call to the people
proclaiming once again that salvation is through Him alone. This
declaration in verses 37-38 says, “If anyone is thirsty, let Him come to Me and
drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being
will flow rivers of living water.’” The Lord called to the people using the
same illustration as when He spoke to the woman at the well (4:10). Offering to
them that as the Christ, He will bring quench their spiritual thirst.
The
people once again became divided over Christ and argue amongst themselves
whether or not Jesus is the Christ. The unbelieving crowd says in verse 42,
“Has not the scripture said that the Christ comes from the descendants of
David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” In a tragic
proclamation, the crowds do not even realize that Jesus was from the line of
David and was indeed born in Bethlehem. Instead they believed Him to be from
Galilee. These unbelieving people had taken the time to know the prophecies of
Christ, but had never looked into His very lineage and birthplace. They lacked
interest in the Messianic proof of Christ and rather speculated in their own
minds whether or not to believe in Him. Because of this there was another
division in the crowd towards Jesus. Some wanted to seize Him, but because His
time had not yet come, no one laid hands on Him.
Not
only were the crowds ignorant of Christ, but the real ignorance lay within the
religious leaders. Even the officers who were told to arrest Jesus did not
bring Him back to the religious leaders saying in verse 46, “Never has a man
spoken the way this man speaks.” The religious are furious with their soldiers
mockingly asking them if they had been led astray and telling them that the
crowd is accursed for listening to Christ.
John,
in a remarkable way, inserts the words of Nicodemus, one of the major religious
leaders of the day. He was the man, who had come to Jesus by night earlier, and
John shows us that unlike the other religious elite, he had not closed his mind
to Christ. Instead quite the opposite is true and he speaks in the Lords favour
in verse 51 saying, “Our Law does not judge a man unless it first hears from
him and knows what he is doing does it?” Angered by the report of the officers
and the claims of Christ, the other religious men mockingly question him
wondering whether he ‘is from Galilee as well’.
Utterly
blinded were both the people and the religious leaders to Christ that they
rejected Him without even looking to see whether or not he was actually born in
Bethlehem of Judea, in the line of David the King. Instead they rejected Him as
Lord, because their hearts were hardened to a Messiah who could save them from
their sins.
Response:
As
John has been writing His gospel about Jesus he has continued to give proofs
that Jesus truly was from God and was the long awaited Messiah King of Israel.
As I studied this passage I realized that there are so many people who are
still divided over Christ today. These people must be instructed to know who
Jesus really is. They should be showed that their unbelief is wrong and that Jesus
Christ is truly the Saviour of the World. As we know it is our responsibility
to go and make disciples for Christ. Teaching them what He taught and
explaining to them that He is the Saviour of their souls, if they repent and
put their trust fully in Him.
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