John 7:37-39 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Pentecost Sunday, May 24, 2026 “The Holy Spirit Gives Water for Thirsty Souls”
Have you ever been extremely thirsty? I don’t mean thirsty as in I forgot to bring my water bottle and the church service is halfway done and it sure would be nice to have a sip of water, maybe I should sneak out to the drinking fountain. I mean thirsty as in I’m on the last mile of a long trail on a hot, dry, sunny summer day—you know the sort. At that point, I realize that my water supply has run out. I keep going, but I feel it first in the corners of my lips. Then it hits the back of my throat. I feel like a dry sponge just begging, desperate for anything cool and wet. But there is nothing. I don’t recommend getting yourself in that situation. Be smart about hiking, and make sure you have plenty of water. But even if you haven’t quite been there, you might be able to appreciate the real, deep, aching thirst that you sometimes feel. Your body has a need. It requires hydration. You need water. And when it is not there, eventually your body, amazingly designed by God even for a world now ruined by sin, tells you about the need in a way that gets harder and harder to ignore. In the verses in front of us today, Jesus uses thirst to picture and portray a spiritual reality. He wants thirsty souls to find in him what they lack and what they need. And the Holy Spirit brings it about that such a need is both recognized and filled. The Holy Spirit gives water for thirsty souls. That’s the message we take to heart today as we celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. In our verses today, we hear Jesus speak “on the last and most important day of the festival.” Since we’re celebrating Pentecost today, it might be natural to assume that the festival mentioned here is Pentecost, but it’s not. This is another festival, one for which there have been several different translations used. It is the festival of shelters or of booths or of tabernacles. This celebration reminded the people of how God cared for them—cared for their ancestors—as they wandered in the wilderness. Just as at that time they lived in tents, temporary shelters, so in this celebration. For about a week, the people would camp in temporary shelters, booths, tabernacles. By the time of this particular annual celebration, the people had definitely taken note of Jesus He had preached to large crowds. He had earned a reputation. They were also confused about him. What did his reputation mean? They argued about whether he could possibly be the Messiah or if he was a good person of a different sort. Or, perhaps, he was not such a good person but an imposter who was somehow misleading the people. In the midst of this sort of confusion and wondering, Jesus stood up and called out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink!” History tells us that one of the observations during this festival was that the priest would take some water from the Pool of Siloam and would pour it out near the altar along with wine from a drink offering. You can understand how the people would connect this action to the water that God provided miraculously as the people wandered in a dry wilderness. At the festival, the people would exclaim the words of Isaiah 12:3, “Therefore with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” God was connecting his physical provision of water with a spiritual truth. Jesus was placing himself right into the middle of that spiritual truth. He was, in fact the well of salvation. He was the one people ought to thirst for. What does it mean to be thirsty in this sense? Spiritual thirst is about recognizing our need for forgiveness. It means recognizing we lack righteousness and holiness before God. We’re not good enough. We’re not worthy of God’s blessing or love or mercy—or really anything. Far too often, we dwell on someone else’s need for Jesus. We worry about the things that they are doing. We complain about how they make us feel. We find it hard to believe that they don’t think the way we do or understand things like we do. It’s kind of like saying, “It’s a hot day. I hope those people drink their water.” Jesus wants us to be thirsty. He wants us to realize that the things we have done and the people we have been have made us into parched deserts, drying out and cracking. The only hope is Jesus. So Jesus stands up in the middle of a parched desert of people who have not connected all of their rituals and celebrations