# John 07 📖: Rivers of Living Water [[📚 Explore the Bible Books]] [[-John Overview]] | [[John 06]] | [[John 08]] > [!info] Table of Contents > [[#📜 Scripture Text (NET)]] > [[#📖 Verse-by-Verse Commentary]] > [[#🧠 Chapter Summary]] > [[#✝️ Christ in This Chapter]] > [[#🤔 Interesting Facts / Historical and Cultural Insights]] > [[#🔎 Key Observations / 🛟 Life Application]] > [[#💬 Discussion Questions]] > [[#✍️ Key Verses to Remember]] > [[#🔗 Related Passages]] > [[#🙏 Devotional Reflection]] > [[#📂 Internal Notes]] ## 📜 Scripture Text (NET) (The NET Bible: New English Translation. Biblical Studies Press, 2005) ### The Feast of Shelters **Principle**: Jesus' timing is perfect. [[#Verse 01.]] After this Jesus traveled throughout Galilee. He stayed out of Judea because the Jewish leaders wanted to kill him.  [[#Verse 02.]] Now the Jewish Feast of Shelters was near. [[#Verse 03.]] So Jesus’ brothers advised him, “Leave here and go to Judea so your disciples may see your miracles that you are performing. [[#Verse 04.]] For no one who seeks to make a reputation for himself does anything in secret. If you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.”  [[#Verse 05.]] (For not even his own brothers believed in him.) [[#Verse 06.]] So Jesus replied, “My time has not yet arrived, but you are ready at any opportunity!  [[#Verse 07.]] The world cannot hate you, but it hates me, because I am testifying about it that its deeds are evil.  [[#Verse 08.]] You go up to the feast yourselves. I am not going up to this feast because my time has not yet fully arrived.” [[#Verse 09.]] When he had said this, he remained in Galilee. [[#Verse 10.]] But when his brothers had gone up to the feast, then Jesus himself also went up, not openly but in secret.  [[#Verse 11.]] So the Jewish leaders were looking for him at the feast, asking, “Where is he?”  [[#Verse 12.]] There was a lot of grumbling about him among the crowds. Some were saying, “He is a good man,” but others, “He deceives the common people.”  [[#Verse 13.]] However, no one spoke openly about him for fear of the Jewish leaders. ### Teaching in the Temple **Principle**: The wisdom of Jesus confounds the wise. [[#Verse 14.]] When the feast was half over, Jesus went up to the temple courts and began to teach. [[#Verse 15.]] Then the Jewish leaders were astonished and said, “How does this man know so much when he has never had formal instruction?” [[#Verse 16.]] So Jesus replied, “My teaching is not from me, but from the one who sent me.  [[#Verse 17.]] If anyone wants to do God’s will, he will know about my teaching, whether it is from God or whether I speak from my own authority.  [[#Verse 18.]] The person who speaks on his own authority desires to receive honor for himself; the one who desires the honor of the one who sent him is a man of integrity,and there is no unrighteousness in him.  [[#Verse 19.]] Hasn’t Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law! Why do you want to kill me?” [[#Verse 20.]] The crowd answered, “You’re possessed by a demon! Who is trying to kill you?”  [[#Verse 21.]] Jesus replied, “I performed one miracle and you are all amazed [[#Verse 22.]] However, because Moses gave you the practice of circumcision (not that it came from Moses, but from the forefathers), you circumcise a male child on the Sabbath. [[#Verse 23.]] But if a male child is circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses is not broken, why are you angry with me because I made a man completely well on the Sabbath?  [[#Verse 24.]] Do not judge according to external appearance, but judge with proper judgment.” ### Questions About Jesus’ Identity **Principle**: The danger of teaching theory rather than truth is that you can miss the whole point. [[#Verse 25.]] Then some of the residents of Jerusalem began to say, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill?  [[#Verse 26.]] Yet here he is, speaking publicly, and they are saying nothing to him. Do the ruling authorities really know that this man is the Christ?  [[#Verse 27.]] But we know where this man comes from. Whenever the Christcomes, no one will know where he comes from.” [[#Verse 28.]] Then Jesus, while teaching in the temple courts, cried out, “You both know me and know where I come from! And I have not come on my own initiative,but the one who sent me is true. You do not know him,  [[#Verse 29.]] but I know him, because I have come from him and he sent me.” [[#Verse 30.]] So then they tried to seize Jesus, but no one laid a hand on him, because his time had not yet come.  [[#Verse 31.]] Yet many of the crowd believed in him and said, “Whenever the Christ comes, he won’t perform more miraculous signs than this man did, will he?” [[#Verse 32.]] The Pharisees heard the crowd murmuring these things about Jesus, so the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to arrest him.  [[#Verse 33.]] Then Jesus said, “I will be with you for only a little while longer, and then I am going to the one who sent me.  [[#Verse 34.]] You will look for me but will not find me, and where I am you cannot come.” [[#Verse 35.]] Then the Jewish leaders said to one another, “Where is he going to go that we cannot find him? He is not going to go to the Jewish people dispersedamong the Greeks and teach the Greeks, is he?  [[#Verse 36.]] What did he mean by saying, ‘You will look for me but will not find me, and where I am you cannot come’?” ### Teaching About the Spirit **Principle**: The Holy Spirit abides and remains with us always. [[#Verse 37.]] On the last day of the feast, the greatest day, Jesus stood up and shouted out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and  [[#Verse 38.]] let the one who believes in me drink. Just as the scripture says, ‘**_From within him_** **_will flow rivers of living water_**.’” [[#Verse 39.]] (Now he said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were going to receive, for the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.) ### Differing Opinions About Jesus **Principle**: Judging Jesus over superficial things just doesn't work. [[#Verse 40.]] When they heard these words, some of the crowd began to say, “This reallyis the Prophet!”  [[#Verse 41.]] Others said, “This is the Christ!” But still others said, “No, for the Christ doesn’t come from Galilee, does he?  [[#Verse 42.]] Don’t the scriptures say that the Christ is _a descendant_ _of David_ and _comes_ _from Bethlehem_, the village where David lived?”  [[#Verse 43.]] So there was a division in the crowd because of Jesus.  [[#Verse 44.]] Some of them were wanting to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him. ### Lack of Belief **Principle**: Jesus will blow your mind. [[#Verse 45.]] Then the officers returned to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why didn’t you bring him back with you?”  [[#Verse 46.]] The officers replied, “No one ever spoke like this man!”  [[#Verse 47.]] Then the Pharisees answered, “You haven’t been deceived too, have you?  [[#Verse 48.]] None of the members of the ruling council or the Pharisees have believed in him, have they? [[#Verse 49.]] But this rabble who do not know the law are accursed!” [[#Verse 50.]] Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus before and who was one of the rulers, said, [[#Verse 51.]] “Our law doesn’t condemn a man unless it first hears from him and learns what he is doing, does it?”  [[#Verse 52.]] They replied, “You aren’t from Galilee too, are you? Investigate carefully and you will see that no prophet comes from Galilee!” [[#Verse 53.]] And each one departed to his own house. ## 📖 Verse-by-Verse Commentary ###### Overall. ###### Verse 01. ###### Verse 02. ###### Verse 03. ###### Verse 04. ###### Verse 05. ###### Verse 06. ###### Verse 07. ###### Verse 08. ###### Verse 09. ###### Verse 10. ###### Verse 11. ###### Verse 12. ###### Verse 13. ###### Verse 14. ###### Verse 15. ###### Verse 16. ###### Verse 17. ###### Verse 18. ###### Verse 19. ###### Verse 20. ###### Verse 21. ###### Verse 22. ###### Verse 23. ###### Verse 24. ###### Verse 25. ###### Verse 26. ###### Verse 27. ###### Verse 28. ###### Verse 29. ###### Verse 30. ###### Verse 31. ###### Verse 32. ###### Verse 33. ###### Verse 34. ###### Verse 35. ###### Verse 36. **Verse 37.** I have never really thought about how hard it would have been for Jesus to stand up in the middle of a crowd and start shouting an invitation to come to Him. People say now when criticizing those who claim to have the gift of healing, “If you have the gift of healing, why don’t you go empty out the hospital?” They seem to be saying that if they really have a gift, they should broadcast it. This is exactly what Jesus did. He didn’t hide what He was doing. He dared anyone who wanted what He had to come get it. ###### Verse 38. ###### Verse 39. ###### Verse 40. ###### Verse 41. ###### Verse 42. ###### Verse 43. ###### Verse 44. ###### Verse 45. ###### Verse 46. ###### Verse 47. ###### Verse 48. ###### Verse 49. ###### Verse 50. ###### Verse 51. ###### Verse 52. ###### Verse 53. ## 🧠 Chapter Summary - What is the main event or teaching? - Jesus is at the feast and still sparring with His enemies. - How does this chapter fit the book’s overall story? - Jesus offers “rivers of living water” to all who come. This goes back to John 4. He is bringing transformation to anyone who will come to Him. - What stands out immediately? - Jesus speaks of the Living Water. - Jesus is defended by Nicodemus. This would mean their meeting must have had an impact. This is good to know because it does not indicate in John 3 what the outflow of the meeting was. Anything Apologetic to point out? - Jesus and the Holy Spirit work in concert together. - Jesus is Lord over the Sabbath. ## ✝️ Christ in This Chapter Christ is the source of living water for every thirsty soul (7:37-38). He gives the Holy Spirit to all who believe in Him (7:39), the promise fulfilled when the Spirit was poured out at Pentecost (Acts 2:33). ## 🤔 Interesting Facts / Historical and Cultural Insights 1. The Feast of Tabernacles (7:2) celebrated the harvest and remembered Israel's wilderness years. People lived in temporary shelters for seven days (Leviticus 23:42-43). 2. According to the Mishnah, each day of the feast a priest carried water from the Pool of Siloam and poured it out at the altar, which gives Jesus' words about living water (7:37-38) a vivid setting. 3. Large lamps were also lit in the temple courts during the feast, the background for Jesus' claim to be the light of the world (8:12). 4. Jesus' brothers did not believe in Him yet (7:5). Later James saw the risen Lord (1 Corinthians 15:7) and became a leader of the Jerusalem church. 5. Jesus waited and went up to the feast privately (7:10), then taught openly in the temple halfway through it (7:14). 6. Jewish teachers normally sat to teach, so Jesus standing and shouting on the last day of the feast (7:37) was striking. 7. Jesus points out that the leaders circumcised on the Sabbath when the eighth day fell on it (7:22-23), so healing a whole person on the Sabbath should not anger them. 8. Some in the crowd said the Messiah must come from Bethlehem (7:42; Micah 5:2), not knowing that Jesus was born there. 9. The temple officers sent to arrest Jesus came back empty-handed, amazed at His words (7:45-46). 10. Nicodemus reminded the leaders that the Law does not condemn a man without first hearing him (7:50-51; Deuteronomy 1:16-17). ## 🔎 Key Observations / 🛟 Life Application > [!note] 🌱 Still growing. This section is on its way. ## 💬 Discussion Questions 1. Even Jesus' own brothers did not believe in Him at first (7:5). What does that teach us about unbelief in the people closest to us? 2. Jesus said, "Do not judge according to external appearance" (7:24). Where are you tempted to judge by appearances? 3. Jesus invited anyone who is thirsty to come to Him and drink (7:37-38). What are you thirsty for, and how can Jesus meet that need? ## ✍️ Key Verses to Remember - 📖 verse 17: Whoever wants to do God's will can know whether Jesus' teaching is from God. - 📖 verse 24: Do not judge by outward appearance, but judge with right judgment. - 📖 verses 37-38: Jesus invites the thirsty to come to Him, promising rivers of living water. - 📖 verse 46: The officers say no one has ever spoken like this man. ## 🔗 Related Passages - 🔗 [[Leviticus 23#Verse 34.|Leviticus 23:34-43]] - The Feast of Tabernacles. - 🔗 [[Isaiah 55#Verse 01.|Isaiah 55:1]] - Come, all who are thirsty. - 🔗 [[Ezekiel 47#Verse 01.|Ezekiel 47:1-12]] - Life-giving water flows from the temple. - 🔗 [[Micah 05#Verse 02.|Micah 5:2]] - The ruler will come from Bethlehem. - 🔗 [[Acts 02#Verse 33.|Acts 2:33]] - The exalted Jesus pours out the promised Spirit. ## 🙏 Devotional Reflection 📝 SOAP: [[John 07 - SOAP|God’s Timing Is Not Our Timing]] Title: He Came to Us So We Could Run to Him - Scripture: (John 7:37) “On the last day, the climax of the festival, Jesus stood and shouted to the crowds, “Anyone who is thirsty may come to me!” - Observation: Jesus came to this Earth so that we could run to Him. We often forget that Christianity is not a daily “spa treatment.” We don’t lay back and let the Lord do all the work in our lives. He gives us the tools and works alongside us as we walk toward freedom. He does all the impossible, but gives us the opportunity to do all the possible. This process is a joy because we are able to grow in fellowship with Him through the process. Jesus came to this Earth so that we could come to Him.  - Application: Run to God every day and walk with Him through life.  - Prayer: “Thank You, Jesus, for coming to us so we could come to You.”  ## 📂 Internal Notes