Overflow
The Gospel of John • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 39:46
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· 155 viewsWhat would people say if we asked them what flows out of your life, especially when you are not at your best? Find out what Jesus says should flow out of our lives in this message from John 7:37-39.
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It was about 9:00 at night when I made a fairly normal evening that night—I don’t remember anything significant happening.
I just remember opening the basement door to check on the washing machine and being surprised to hear that it was still running.
This was the first time we had used this particular washing machine, and we got it second-hand.
I turned on the light, and a quick trip down the stairs to the basement presented me with a sight that no one wants to see: Our laundry room floor was filled with water, and it was seeping under the paneling on the walls and into the finished rooms in the rest of the basement.
To complicate matters, the previous owner of the home blocked off the floor drain, so there wasn’t anywhere for the water to go.
I immediately stopped the washer, called my dad, and started cleaning up.
So what went wrong? The sensor that tells the washer when it is full was not properly connected, so instead of stopping when it should have, the water just continued to overflow.
It would have run forever if we hadn’t stopped it that night. It was connected to town water, so it would have kept overflowing as long as it stayed on.
Although it was a troubling sight that night, it gives us a great picture of the principle Jesus is outlining for us today.
In fact, here’s the main thing I want you to see this morning: If we have come to Christ, our lives should overflow with him.
We are going to see Jesus use a picture today that he has already used in several chapters recently.
Again, he is going to call the thirsty among us to drink deeply of him.
If you have been with us, that should sound familiar.
We saw that back in chapter 4, where Jesus talked to the woman at the well and told her that anyone who drinks the water he gives will never thirst again. The emphasis there was that we need to recognize our need for Jesus, and that he alone can satisfy our deepest needs.
Last week, we saw him use this picture again in chapter 6, especially in verse 35:
“I am the bread of life,” Jesus told them. “No one who comes to me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in me will ever be thirsty again.
As we went through the rest of the chapter, we saw that feeding on Christ requires belief that goes down to the very core of who we are. We don’t need a surface-level tasting of Christ; instead, we need to believe in him with everything we have and are. Finding that lasting satisfaction, then, calls me to give up everything.
Now, as we revisit that same picture in chapter 7, we are going to focus on what happens when we do turn to Christ and feed on him or drink the living water he offers.
We are just going to focus on verses 37-39, but we need to talk about what is going on in the rest of the chapter to make sense of it all.
Let’s read these verses first...
This is where we get our main idea: if we have come to Christ, our lives should overflow with him.
Now, let’s back up and get some context.
Look back at John 7:1-2...
Everything in chapter 7 takes place around the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles/Booths/Shelters.
This is a festival that took place five days after the observation of Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement. It was at the end of the grape, olive, and fruit harvest, and it was a time of celebration. People would flock to Jerusalem and build shelters all over the city to remember the time when they wandered in the wilderness.
Every day, the priests would take a golden pitcher and draw water from the pool of Siloam. They would then take that water to the temple and carry it around the altar while the people sang psalms of praise and thanksgiving to the God of the harvest. [1]
All week long, the Jews have been looking for and talking about Jesus. The leaders are ready to have him arrested, and they even want him killed.
He has been teaching, but no one is willing to actually arrest him.
On the seventh day of the feast, the priests would go through this water ceremony seven times. It appears that, right in the middle of the celebration and praying for water, Jesus stands up and calls out to the crowd.
In essence, he declares that he is the water they are seeking!
We are going to use three different words to describe our reaction to what Jesus says.
1) Thirst.
1) Thirst.
I don’t want us to spend a lot of time on these first two words, because we have talked about them a fair amount recently.
However, I want to remind those of us who have been here and bring anyone up to speed who hasn’t been a part of what we have been talking about.
Jesus says, “If anyone is thirsty...”
What we have maintained over the last few weeks is that, whether we acknowledge it or not, everyone’s heart is thirsty for something that will give them lasting satisfaction and identity.
When we looked at the woman at the well, we saw that she had tried to fill the thirst in her heart with relationships.
Ultimately, her multiple marriages were not able to soothe the ache in her heart.
We are all looking for something to fill the void that we feel in our hearts, whether we look for it in relationships, pleasure, comfort, hard work, or whatever we think will make us happy and valuable to ourselves and others.
Most of us live our lives trying to ignore that thirst.
We get like little kids who are tired and refuse to take a nap. Have you ever been around a kid who promises you they aren’t tired, but they nod off or stare blankly at the TV?
Or, have you ever been around someone who assures you they aren’t sick, all the time coughing, blowing their nose, and looking at you with bloodshot eyes?
You won’t get well until you acknowledge that you are sick and you go get medicine or treatment.
That child won’t get rested until they lay down and take a nap.
In the same way, your heart won’t find the satisfaction it is crying out for until you recognize that you are spiritually thirsty.
We all are thirsty; the question is whether or not we will admit it.
Jesus’s words here in John 7 are directed at those who are willing to admit it—those who are willing to be man enough to admit that they can’t fix the mess of their lives on their own, or those women who are willing to let down their guard and acknowledge that they need him.
Jesus calls anyone who will recognize their thirst to come to him and drink.
Elsewhere, he even said that acknowledging your hunger and thirst is part of the way to be blessed:
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Doesn’t that run contrary to what we think life is about?
We often think that the way to live a blessed life is to be self-sufficient—to have enough money or influence or stability that I don’t want or need anything from anyone.
Jesus says that true happiness, true blessing, is found in the opposite; it is found in recognizing a hunger and thirst for being right with God.
We have asked it several times in recent weeks, but let me ask you again: Have you ever acknowledged that you are thirsty? Have you realized yet that nothing you can do on your own can ever satisfy that thirst?
If you never have, but you are reaching that point this morning, can I just tell you that you are in a great place right now?
You may feel like confused or disoriented because you just figured out that you have been going about life all wrong.
That is actually a tremendous thing, because it is only when God brings us to a point of acknowledging our thirst that we can move on to the second word we are focusing on this morning:
2) Drink.
2) Drink.
Look back at verse 37.
Remember what is happening around Jesus as he is saying this.
The crowds are singing praise to God as the God of the harvest, and the priests are carrying golden pitchers of water as a reminder of the fact that God is the one who gave them water in the desert and provides the rain for their crops.
In the middle of all of that, Jesus stands up and declares that he is the one that they are talking about!
He is the God who gave rain for their harvests, and even more importantly, he is the God who gives life to our souls.
If your heart is thirsty and needs water, you need to come to Jesus and drink!
What does that look like? How do we actually drink from Jesus?
Is that why we got a new water fountain in the Foyer?
No; the next verse actually gives us a hint. Look at the first words in verse 38— “the one who believe in me...”
We come back to this idea that we have seen throughout the book of John: the way we receive this living water is by believing in Jesus.
Remember, that’s why John is writing this book!
But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
If you are thirsty today, come drink deep and believe in Jesus.
Believe that he really is the Son of God who came in the flesh. He really performed miracles that demonstrated his power over everything in creation.
He really did love the world so much that he would die in your place and mine and be raised from the dead so we didn’t have to keep looking for satisfaction and meaning and purpose and power in ourselves, but instead could surrender to him and live as a part of his kingdom forever.
This belief is more than just head knowledge; it is trusting him with everything we have and everything we are.
John returns to this over and over again because the message of the gospel is so essential.
You need your heart to settle on the truth that believing in Jesus is the only way to find eternal life and lasting satisfaction, and you need to be able to tell your friends where they can find life as well!
If you have never put your trust in Jesus, you need to believe in him.
Don’t just sip; drink deeply of the truth that he is in charge of everything in the world, and yet he loves you and wants you to know him and wants to work in you to help you find the life you were created to live.
Drink deeply by believing in him!
If you know you have received the living water that Jesus supplies, then let me ask you: what are you doing to help those around you find that water?
When is the last time you talked with someone you don’t think knows Jesus and helped them discover who he is?
You can’t save anyone; you can’t make them drink. However, God can use you to help them hear about what Jesus has done, and he can use that to draw them to himself.
I mentioned at the beginning, though, that much of that is review for us.
What else does this passage have to say for those who have been saved, who have believed and have had a drink of that living water?
That brings us to our last term for today:
3) Overflow.
3) Overflow.
Read verse 38 with me again...
Those who believe in him will have streams of living water flowing from deep within.
What does that even mean? John gives us some additional information in verse 39...
So, what is it that should overflow out of our lives when we have come to Christ?
John says that what should flow out is the Holy Spirit. When Jesus said these words originally, they Holy Spirit hadn’t been poured out on the disciples yet. That happened fully in Acts 2 on the Day of Pentecost.
Ever since the events in the book of Acts took place, those who put their trust in Christ receive the Holy Spirit in them from the moment they are saved.
That means, if you have believed in Jesus and have eternal life right now, you have the Spirit of God living inside you.
You can’t find Him on an MRI or PET scan, but he takes up residence in your life.
We will talk more about some of the things he does in our lives in the later chapters in John that we will cover in the spring, but the Holy Spirit living in us is who gives us the power to resist temptation, to do the right thing, to change the way we think and act, to help us understand the Bible, and so much more.
As the Spirit works in us to shape and transform us, though, Jesus says that the life that the Spirit gives us flows out of our lives and impacts our relationship with him and with others.
Did you notice that he said that these streams flow from “deep within him?”
When we believe in Christ, and we receive the Holy Spirit and all the other blessings of salvation, notice that this isn’t just a surface-level change.
This is life that changes us in the very core of our being, down deep into the most central parts of who we are.
Remember that the Bible doesn’t talk about us following Jesus in a casual way; this is a core reality of who we are.
That also means that the identity that Christ gives us is not one we simply put on, it is one that is placed deep within us.
I go back in my mind to my childhood. I know I have mentioned this before, but they had a spring that fed the house. I remember hiking up in the woods and seeing the cinder-block spring box that surrounded the base of this tree.
Occasionally, you would pull back the cover, and flowing through the roots of the tree would be this cold, clear water that was better than any water in the rest of the world in my opinion.
It poured out of the side of this hill year round. I don’t know how deep underground the source of water was, but I know it stayed cold all the time.
There was water in that hill, and in this place, it couldn’t hold back any more and ran out to supply us with what we needed for drinking and bathing and washing our clothes and whatever else we needed.
I can’t think of a better picture than that for what Jesus is referring to here.
When we believe in him, he gives us his Spirit, and from the core of who we are, he pours out of our life and into the lives of those around us.
Now, let’s move from the poetic picture to the practical.
What does it actually look like for us to overflow with the Spirit of God?
Paul gives us a great list of character qualities to look for that are a mark of the work of God in our lives.
Remember, some people may have some of these qualities without having a relationship with Christ, but they will never know them fully apart from him.
Not only that, these are the overflow of what God has done, not the way we get saved. They flow out of what God has done in us, and we grow in them as we grow closer to Christ.
With that understanding, then, let’s look at what the overflowing of the Spirit of God from our lives should look like:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things.
Look at that list. Are those characteristics that are flowing out of your life today? Yesterday? This week? Over the past month?
Would your spouse agree? What about your kids? How would your roommates describe what they have seen overflowing?
If not, why not? It is because of one of two reasons: you have either never drank the living water Christ offers and truly believed in him, or you sure aren’t acting like it.
Because if your deepest thirst has been met in Christ, then you have been and are filled with a love that can allow you to love others when they don’t deserve it. If your deepest needs are met, then what could possibly take away your joy, even when you aren’t happy?
We could go on, couldn’t we?
Again, all of this is possible because Jesus, the one who stood up and called the thirsty to him so they would overflow with living water, is the one who spilled his blood for us.
He was put to death and raised from the dead to defeat sin and give us the life that nothing else can give.
Are you thirsty? Have you come to Christ and drank from the living water he offers? If so, is that what overflows from your life?
If not, what do you need to do in response? Take a moment and do business with God.
Endnote:
[1] Borchert, Gerald L. John 1–11. Vol. 25A. The New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996.