Of the Spirit (part 5)
When Jesus cried out, “Come to me and drink,” the Greek words in that verse tell of great emotion. It was like a logjam suddenly being broken and the logs rushing freely down the river, because Jesus had gone through a great deal with these people. He had quite a history with them. But now was the time a new chapter in their history was about to open.
And there was a clue what that new chapter would be, because Jesus took them back into their history to the actual event they’d been celebrating during the last seven days of their autumn festival. It was the time in Exodus 17:1 when “The whole Israelite community camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.” Millions of them in a desert with no water; a desperate situation.
And they voiced their desperation to Moses too, angrily demanding him to produce water, and even blaming him for deliberately “making us and our children and livestock die of thirst,” verse 3. But what on earth did they expect Moses to do? Suddenly produce water from bare rock?
Exasperated, Moses “cried out to the Lord, ‘What am I to do with these people? They’re about ready to stone me,’” verse 4, stones being in plentiful supply too.
He got an immediate answer from the Lord too – for him to walk ahead with some of the elders of Israel, taking the staff he’d previously struck the river Nile with, “and by the rock at Horeb, strike the rock and water will come out of it for the people to drink,” verses 5-6. Which he did.
Afterwards, Moses wanted that spot memorialized by naming it “The Testing and Quarrelling Place,” because of the Israelites’ quarrelsome, testing attitude of “Is the Lord among us or not?” verse 7.
It was with that background, then, that Jesus stood up before the descendants of those people at the Temple and said in essence, “The Lord is among you, all right, because here I am, the same Lord too, only this time if you come to me, rivers of water will gush out to satisfy your thirst.” Same Lord, same purpose, but a new chapter, in which an amazing new power within them would emerge…(more on this tomorrow)
Buck To Basics 