Sermon Text: John 7:37–39
Date: May 24, 2026
Event: The Day of Pentecost, Year A

John 7:37–39 (EHV)

On the last and most important day of the festival, Jesus stood up and called out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink! 38As the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from deep within the person who believes in me.” 39By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were going to receive. For the Holy Spirit had not yet come, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.

Drink Deeply from the Spirit

Thirst is one of those universally understood needs. Now, at certain times and in certain places, the need may be more or less pronounced. In some places, people are struggling to find any clean water at all, while perhaps it’s more common around us to make sure we’re drinking enough of the readily available water to maintain our health. But regardless, water is a basic need shared by all people—by all life that God has made. So if we describe a different need as a thirst, it is intentionally or unintentionally communicating something about the strength or severity of that need.

Jesus regularly uses the picture of thirst to express our spiritual needs. Perhaps the most famous is the conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, where he describes his ability to provide Living Water, initially misunderstood as something that would permanently quench physical thirst, but Jesus makes clear that he is addressing the spiritual thirst she and all people have.

This morning, as we observe the Day of Pentecost, we have another instance in which Jesus uses the picture of thirst to describe our spiritual needs. The context of our brief Gospel is that Jesus is in Jerusalem for the feast of Tabernacles (also called the festival of Shelters and, on our modern calendars, most often referred to as Sukkot). This festival was a reminder of the time when Israel lived in the wilderness as nomads, wandering for forty years after God had rescued them from their slavery in Egypt. Among other things, God specially directed the people, “You shall live in temporary shelters for seven days—every native-born person in Israel shall live in shelters—so that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel live in shelters when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God” (Leviticus 23:42-43). Along with Passover and Pentecost, the Festival of Shelters was one of the three main festivals around the harvest.

This context can help us understand where Jesus is coming from. The time in the wilderness is bookended by the famous accounts of God providing water for his thirsty people from the most unlikely source—a rock. In the moment of their greatest need, God sent miraculous water to sustain this nomadic nation.

With the context of that national and spiritual history surrounding them, at the most important day of the festival, Jesus stood up and called out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink!” Jesus provides water, unending streams of living water. This is the same point and picture Jesus had made with the woman at the well—Jesus provides “water” that will be self-replicating, water that will eliminate thirst forever. This proposition is tempting in our day, but how much more in the near-desert regions of Israel, where labor-intensive trips to the well were the only way to get that life-sustaining water!

Of course, Jesus wasn’t talking about physical thirst with the woman at the well, nor is he doing so here. He’s not promising to crack open one of the large stones around the temple complex to let people drink their fill. He’s promising to quench their spiritual thirst with this eternal, life-giving water.

Like physical thirst, spiritual thirst is something common to all people of all times. Our sin creates spiritual dehydration within us. Despite the fact that our sinful natures love sin and think it is where we should be focused all the time, the reality is that it is literally killing us. Piling sin upon sin is like trying to solve being thirsty with a spoonful of salt; not only will it not help, but it’s going to just compound the problem, making things much worse.

The problem is that we can’t just go to the tap, the hose, or the water bottle to solve this problem. In fact, we can’t do anything. We are like a person admitted to the hospital with severe dehydration that requires doctors and nurses to be involved to run hydration through IVs to get our body stabilized. Our sin makes us helplessly thirsty.

And so we need the Physician of our souls to come to us and tend to us. Jesus’ work is giving us the living water of his forgiveness that solves the dehydration of sin. His life lived for us and his death died in our place solves this spiritual need that we could not meet ourselves. He refreshes us, restores us, and forgives us.

As we celebrate the first Christian Petentcost day, we’re celebrating what is essentially the birthday of the Christian church. And lest we get it confused, this is not the first time the Holy Spirit ever did work—he’s been active in the hearts of all believers for all time. But, this was the special sending of the Holy Spirit that Jesus had promised to his disciples, the reminder of everything he had said to them, the “click” of understanding they needed to fully comprehend what Jesus had actually done, to truly get how Jesus was a spring of living water for them and for all people.

And what did the Holy Spirit enable the disciples to do on the first Christian Pentecost day? To share it. Whether it was drawing a crowd through the sound of wind and the flickering tongues of fire or being able to communicate to this metropolitan group in their own individual native languages, the Holy Spirit empowered his people to share the good news about Jesus, that is, “the wonderful works of God” (Acts 2:11).

As the Holy Spirit sends the disciples with the gospel message of sins forgiven in Jesus, he is at the same time creating faith to trust this message in the hearts of those who hear it. Beyond the verses of our First Reading, we learn that on that first Christian Pentecost Day, God solved the spiritual thirst of more than 3,000 people; not bad for a church whose total numbered just about 120 earlier that day.

This faith is what Jesus is talking about in our Gospel when he says, “streams of living water will flow from deep within the person who believes in me.” As a believer, you are not merely relying on things outside of you to bring you comfort and peace, to quench that gnawing spiritual thirst we all have by nature. No, because of the faith God has given, the Holy Spirit lives within you, so yes, the external means of grace, the gospel in God’s Word and the sacraments, are the singular way that God tends to that faith inside of you, but that faith is also a strong testimony to God’s love and comfort from within you. It is a competing voice to the sinful nature inside of us that only wants to rebel against God.

From this indwelling of the Holy Spirit, you have the comfort that your God loves you and care for you. You have the refreshment that your sins are truly forgiven because of God’s love and work for you. In the heat of all the hardship of this life, you have the cool waters of God’s assurance that one day you and I will be with him forever in heaven.

This week, we finished up our midweek Bible Class on the End Times, which we’ve been through this academic year. Jesus is so consistent in picturing his love and forgiveness as water that quenches thirst, that that is even how he describes eternity, the glorious rescue and never-ending perfection we are looking forward to because Jesus has saved us. Consider how God describes this life in the famous picture of the New Heavens and New Earth near the end of the book of Revelation: It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To anyone who is thirsty, I will give freely from the spring of the water of life. The one who overcomes will inherit these things. I will be his God, and he will be my son (Revelation 21:6-7).

Jesus’ call is consistent: “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink!” My dear fellow Christians, don’t neglect your spiritual thirst. Drink deeply from the Spirit who testifies to God’s love for you. Immerse yourself in the refreshment of Jesus’ forgiveness. Come and drink, listen to his Word, receive his sacrament, and meditate on his love for you. Continue to go to our Savior, the spring of the water of life, and drink for free from his love and forgiveness. And let’s also bottle up that love to share with those wasting away in the desert of this life so that they, too, may know and enjoy the refreshment of their loving Savior. Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria