Pentecost Sunday, the Church’s birthday, is May 28, 2023.

Readings for Year A along with other resources for Pentecost can be found here.

There are two Gospel options in Year A. One is an extract — John 20:19-23 — from the Second Sunday of Easter, the Doubting Thomas reading, John 20:19-31.

The other option is from John 7, which follows. Emphases mine below:

John 7:37-39

7:37 On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me,

7:38 and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”

7:39 Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

This episode in our Lord’s ministry took place less than a year before His crucifixion.

It happened during the week-long Jewish feast of Sukkot, or Booths in the sense of tents or shelters. It is also known as the Feast of Tabernacles.

It commemorates God’s protection of and provision for the Israelites when they spent 40 years in the desert. Because it takes place in the early autumn, it is also a harvest feast and a time of great joy.

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out that anyone who thirsts should come to Him and let those who believe drink, for Scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water’ (verses 37, 38).

As is so often the case, there is much to examine in so few verses.

Matthew Henry’s commentary summarises what happened on the final day of Sukkot, the festival’s culmination:

… it was a custom of the Jews, which they received by tradition, the last day of the feast of tabernacles to have a solemnity, which they called Libatio aquæ—The pouring out of water. They fetched a golden vessel of water from the pool of Siloam, brought it into the temple with sound of trumpet and other ceremonies, and, upon the ascent to the altar, poured it out before the Lord with all possible expressions of joy.

John MacArthur has more:

At this feast, they celebrated the wilderness wanderings for 40 years when they lived in tents and booths and temporary housing that they moved as they migrated around the wilderness for those four decades.  During that period of time, God protected them, preserved them, gave them food and drink.  Finally, that ended with a generation dying and a few entering into the land of promise, the Canaan land, and the birth of the nation of Israel.

To commemorate God’s preservation of that nation during those years of wandering, God instituted in Leviticus 23, a feast, an annual feast of remembrance around the time of the Fall [autumn]. 

They were in that feast.  It’s a week-long, and now it’s the last day.  That’s very very important.  The last day.  Very significant.  Let me tell you why.  Every day of the feast, there was a ritual that was repeated.  As far as we can tell from history, it was repeated every day.  And this is what happened.  Based on Leviticus 23:40, the instruction is this: that the people, the worshippers who celebrate the feast are to take the fruit of good trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook – several different kinds of trees.  They are to get the branches.  That’s Leviticus 23.  They are to take the branches, and they are to use those branches to create booths to commemorate the wilderness wandering and the temporary housing remembering the goodness of God.  That had developed into a very very special kind of ritual. 

The Pharisees had instructed the people to all bring their branches, at each particular time of every day during the feast, to the main altar and to surround that altar and put up their boughs and their branches to create a kind of makeshift covering over the altar.  This was in the temple area.  Every day of the festival, thousands upon thousands, tens of thousands of people were there, and they would come, and they would create this covering of palm branches, willow branches, and other kinds of thick trees.  They would form this kind of covering around the altar.  The altar is then in the midst of this covering with all these people surrounding it – those holding the branches and those beyond.  The high priest would then go to the Pool of Siloam by prescription.  And he had a golden pitcher in his hand, and he would dip it in the water of the Pool of Siloam.  And he would come back, and he would pour the water out on the altar as a remembrance of God providing the waters for the people of Israel at Meribah out of the rock. 

And when he poured the water, historians tell us, the people were required – by the way, he came back through the water gate, which was so named because people brought water through it.  So he would come back through the water gate, and historians tell us the people recite Isaiah 12:3.  Isaiah 12:3 says, “With joy, shall we draw water out of the wells of salvation.”  “With joy, shall we draw water out of the wells of salvation.” 

So the whole ceremony remembers the wilderness wandering.  It remembers the water provided there, but it’s all symbolic of God’s salvation, his deliverance of Israel temporarily during those 40 years – is merely a remembrance of God as a saving God who delivers his people and should remind them of soul salvation.  The water, then, comes to the altar in the hand of the priest.  It is poured out.  And when it is poured out, and the people have recited the passage from Isaiah, they were required then to sing the Hallel.  The Levitical choir would start the Hallel is sung 113-118.  Hallel from which we get “Hallelujah,” hymns of praise.  They would sing Psalms 113-118.  So that’s the scene … it was the most celebratory of all the Jewish feasts.

So the whole dramatic ceremony is a vivid thanksgiving for God’s salvation of his people and protection and preservation and deliverance of his people in the wilderness wandering and how he supplied water for them.  They also added to the celebration a prayer for more water that God would send rain.  Now what makes this especially important on the last day, is that on the last day, before pouring out the water, the people marched around the altar seven times.  Why?  To commemorate the march around what city?  The city of Jericho because that spelled the end of the wilderness wandering. 

Jesus, ever obedient to Jewish law, was present. He issued an open invitation to everyone there. He stood and cried out in issuing it.

Henry explains our Lord’s intent in crying out:

Jesus stood and cried, which denotes, (1.) His great earnestness and importunity. His heart was upon it, to bring poor souls in to himself. The erection of his body and the elevation of his voice were indications of the intenseness of his mind. Love to souls will make preachers lively. (2.) His desire that all might take notice, and take hold of this invitation. He stood, and cried, that he might the better be heard; for this is what every one that hath ears is concerned to hear.

Henry discusses the importance of seizing the opportunity to pass a message onto a crowd:

Now on this day Christ published this gospel-call, because (1.) Much people were gathered together, and, if the invitation were given to many, it might be hoped that some would accept of it, Prov 1 20. Numerous assemblies give opportunity of doing the more good. (2.) The people were now returning to their homes, and he would give them this to carry away with them as his parting word. When a great congregation is to be dismissed, and is about to scatter, as here, it is affecting to think that in all probability they will never come all together again in this world, and therefore, if we can say or do any thing to help them to heaven, that must be the time. It is good to be lively at the close of an ordinance. Christ made this offer on the last day of the feast. [1.] To those who had turned a deaf ear to his preaching on the foregoing days of this sacred week; he will try them once more, and, if they will yet hear his voice, they shall live. [2.] To those who perhaps might never have such another offer made them, and therefore were concerned to accept of this; it would be half a year before there would be another feast, and in that time they would many of them be in their graves. Behold now is the accepted time.

Both commentators call our attention to the openness of His invitation.

Henry says:

The invitation itself is very general: If any man thirst, whoever he be, he is invited to Christ, be he high or low, rich or poor, young or old, bond or free, Jew or Gentile. It is also very gracious: “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. If any man desires to be truly and eternally happy, let him apply himself to me, and be ruled by me, and I will undertake to make him so.”

MacArthur says:

There will be another one in chapter 8.  There will be a number of invitations right on down to the very end of his ministry.  In fact, I doubt whether a day went by in his ministry in which he didn’t invite people to salvation, to the Kingdom, to the forgiveness of sin and eternal life.  There was likely not a day that he didn’t invite people to believe in him, to confess him as Lord and Savior, and receive the salvation that comes only through him. 

Earlier on, John’s Gospel gives us another of our Lord’s invitations to living water, which He made to the Samaritan woman at the well, John 4:5-42:

4:10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

4:11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?

4:12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”

4:13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,

4:14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

MacArthur reminds us:

You will also remember in chapter 6 as he was speaking of himself as the “bread of life.”  He encouraged people to eat this bread and to drink as well.  In a land where water was scarce, a very dry land, water was a great commodity to express the work of salvation, the benefit of salvation to a thirsty soul.  So this is a striking invitation.  There was a context for the woman at the well.  There was a real well and real water, and he played off of that to talk about the water that will satisfy a soul.  And that soul will never thirst again.  Here again, there is a context for the analogy of water …

MacArthur says that Jesus chose a powerful moment to issue His invitation here:

It is on that day, at that moment, when they are all celebrating the deliverance and the salvation of God – with that as a backdrop, and perhaps – can’t be certain – but perhaps, in the quiet moment when the festival reaches its apex and the priest takes the golden pitcher and pours the water, it is perhaps at that moment that Jesus says, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come and drink.  Let him come to me.”  Jesus dramatically captures the moment – turns it to himself.  He must have positioned himself in the right place. 

We read in verse 37 that he “cried out.”  There’s that ekrazen again that strong word for yelling at the top of his voice.  He wants to be heard.  And in the drama of that moment, no doubt, he picked a moment when everybody was sort of holding their breath at the drama of the celebration.  Jesus says, “‘You are thankful to God for water in the wilderness – water that satisfied the thirst of your forefathers.  Come to me for water that quenches your soul.’”  Your soul.  You understand again, in a land where there’s so little water, how much water symbolized satisfaction – a necessity for life.  So Jesus uses that analogy now for the third time really in the Gospel of John. 

MacArthur discusses the elements of this invitation and their importance:

In the words that he says at that moment, there are three actions: “thirst,” “come,” “drink.”  Three verbs.  They really generally correspond to what the Medieval Latin fathers used to call notitia, fiducia, and assensus, the three elements necessary for saving faith.  “Thirst,” that is the knowledge of the problem, the knowledge of the alienation, the knowledge of the deprivation, the knowledge of the condition and understanding of its implications, and including a knowledge of the source of water.  Then “come,” that’s fiducia.  That’s trust.  And then “drink,” that’s assent. 

Let’s kind of break those down a little bit.  It’s pretty simple.  The first tells of a recognized need: thirst.  Thirst.  Notice the general open invitation “If anyone is thirsty.”  “If anyone is thirsty.”  “If anyone is thirsty.”  The invitations of Jesus were always unlimited.  They were always universal.  They were always open-ended.  “‘If anyone is thirsty, come unto me all you who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.’”  God told of the world that he gave his only begotten son that “whosoever believes shall not perish but have everlasting life.”  Here again is another one of those invitations.  “If you are thirsty.”  Thirst is a craving.  Thirst is a conscious craving.  It’s something we know about.  It’s something we’re fully aware of.  We feel it, and the more thirst increases, the more anxious a person becomes.  In fact, there can actually be a kind of madness that sets in if you cannot get a drink as you become more and more seriously thirsty.

What’s he talking about?  He’s talking about a thirsty soul.  A longing for deliverance, longing for hope, longing for peace, longing for forgiveness, for salvation, for liberation from the power of sin.  If you are thirsting – anyone who is thirsting – anyone whose soul is parched, that’s where it all starts.  It starts with that craving.  Then the consciousness, the acute consciousness of that craving. 

People come to Christ because they’re thirsty.  Do you understand that?  Because their souls are empty.  That’s why when you do Evangelism, you don’t start with “come to Christ.”  You start with the recognition of the desperate situation the sinner is in and try to help him understand that.  So that’s where it all begins with thirst.  Like the Philippian jailer who said, “What must I do to be saved?”  That’s a thirsty soul crying out.

The second verb – the second action is “come.”  It signifies the approach to him.  “‘If any man will come after me” – Luke 9:23.  Seeing him as the only source of soul satisfying, nourishing, living water.  Come.  Come to me.  Come to Christ.  It means, with all your heart and with all your will, you come to him.  If he were here, you would do it with your feet, but he’s not here; you do it with your heart and your mind.  If he were here, you would come and stand before him in your thirst.  And you would fall on your knees, and you would cry out for him to give you the living water as the only source. 

Spiritually speaking, it is to move toward Jesus Christ as the only source of your need.  Turn your back on the world.  Abandon your sin.  Abandon your self-confidence.  Cast your self at the feet of incarnate grace and truth in Christ.  That’s “come.”  No one else you can come to?  He is the way, the truth, and the life.  You come to him.  You come to him alone.  Let me remind you the only qualification is thirst – not morality, not religiosity, not good works, not being a benevolent person, not being “a basically good person.”  There is no qualification like that.  The only qualification is that you are thirsty.  And very often, benevolent, basically good people, religious people, moral people don’t feel the thirst.  That’s why when Jesus came, all the moral, religious people hated him.  And it was the sinners and tax collectors and outcasts that came.  It’s the thirsty that come.  Nowhere else to go but him?  He is the only one who can satisfy the soul. 

Thirdly, “drink.”  Drink means to appropriate – to appropriate.  A river flowing through the parched valley doesn’t do any good unless you drink.  Drinking means to take him, receive him, make him your own, embrace him.  As he said to the woman at the well in John 4:14, “‘Drink, and you’ll never thirst.’”  As he said in John 6, “‘You must eat and drink of me, my life, and my death.’”  A songwriter wrote, “I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘Behold, I freely give the living water, thirsty one.  Stoop down, and drink, and live.  I came to Jesus and I drank of that life-giving stream.  My thirst was quenched.  My soul revived, and now I live in him.’”  That’s a sentiment that every Christian can understand.  I came; I drank; I took Christ in.

All of that is simply a way to break out what it means to believe. 

Then there is belief itself, which Jesus mentioned next (verse 38):

… this may be the most remarkable part about this invitation.  Look at verse 38: “‘He who believes in me, as the Scripture said,’” and by the way, he collects from several verses in Isaiah and even makes reference to Ezekiel 37, a kind of composite statement, “‘as the Scripture said, from his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”  Let me give you a simple analogy.  This water that flows to you when you come to Christ comes into your life doesn’t stay in you.  You’re not a bucket.  You’re not a reservoir.  It goes through you.  You are a fountain that becomes a river.  Really amazing statement.  Not only do we drink and have our soul thirst forever quenched, but we become the fountain and the river of living water to others as it flows from us. 

Verse 38 talks about the impact of a believer on the world.  It’s thrilling.  We receive soul-refreshing spiritual water, which is really an analogy for spiritual life, eternal life, with all of its elements and components meaning conversion, redemption, justification, sanctification, adoption, everything.  We receive all that – a constant spring of pure, cleansing water of life in us, sanctifying us, making us more like Christ.  But at the same time, and the real key here is, we become a fountain that turns into a river for the world.  The blessed one becomes the blessor.  The recipient of sovereign grace becomes the channel of sovereign grace.  And in not a trickle, but a gushing river. 

This is just an amazing statement about how much your life matters … When you think about who matters in society, Christians matter because they are a saver of life unto life.  They’re the fountain and river of living water that flows to the world.  The results and people being redeemed and taken to eternal glory.  That matters. 

Therefore, MacArthur says that these invitations are more than historical episodes from our Lord’s ministry. They raise questions for us as well:

… I want to talk just a little bit about the matter of this invitation to begin with.  Admiring Jesus, being impressed by Jesus, watching Jesus from afar, saying kind things about him is insufficient.  It puts a person, in the end, in the same Hell as the people who hated Jesus, who hate him now, who reject him, who were guilty of his death even in Jerusalem at the Crucifixion.  Admiring Jesus is not sufficient to grant eternal life.  Some kind of superficial commendation of Jesus is not enough.  The question is: what will you do with his invitations?  What will you do with his invitations? 

How were the people at the Sukkot celebration — and how are we — going to become that gushing river of water?

John explains that Jesus was speaking of the Holy Spirit, which believers then were to receive at the first Pentecost, although, when Jesus issued that invitation, the Spirit would not yet be with everyone, because our Lord had not yet been glorified (verse 39) through His death, resurrection and ascension.

Henry gives us this analysis:

Observe,

(1.) It is promised to all that believe on Christ that they shall receive the Holy Ghost. Some received his miraculous gifts (Mark 16 17, 18); all receive his sanctifying graces. The gift of the Holy Ghost is one of the great blessings promised in the new covenant (Acts 2 39), and, if promised, no doubt performed to all that have an interest in that covenant.

(2.) The Spirit dwelling and working in believers is as a fountain of living running water, out of which plentiful streams flow, cooling and cleansing as water, mollifying and moistening as water, making them fruitful, and others joyful; see ch. 3 5. When the apostles spoke so fluently of the things of God, as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2 4), and afterwards preached and wrote the gospel of Christ with such a flood of divine eloquence, then this was fulfilled, Out of his belly shall flow rivers.

(3.) This plentiful effusion of the Spirit was yet the matter of a promise; for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. See here [1.] That Jesus was not yet glorified. It was certain that he should be glorified, and he was ever worthy of all honour; but he was as yet in a state of humiliation and contempt. He had never forfeited the glory he had before all worlds, nay, he had merited a further glory, and, besides his hereditary honours, might claim the achievement of a mediatorial crown; and yet all this is in reversion. Jesus is now upheld (Isa 42 1), is now satisfied (Isa 53 11), is now justified (1 Tim 3 16), but he is not yet glorified. And, if Christ must wait for his glory, let not us think it much to wait for ours. [2.] That the Holy Ghost was not yet given. oupo gar hen pneuma—for the Holy Ghost was not yet. The Spirit of God was from eternity, for in the beginning he moved upon the face of the waters. He was in the Old-Testament prophets and saints, and Zacharias and Elisabeth were both filled with the Holy Ghost. This therefore must be understood of the eminent, plentiful, and general effusion of the Spirit which was promised, Joel 2 28, and accomplished, Acts 2 1, etc. The Holy Ghost was not yet given in that visible manner that was intended. If we compare the clear knowledge and strong grace of the disciples of Christ themselves, after the day of Pentecost, with their darkness and weakness before, we shall understand in what sense the Holy Ghost was not yet given; the earnests and first-fruits of the Spirit were given, but the full harvest was not yet come. That which is most properly called the dispensation of the Spirit did not yet commence. The Holy Ghost was not yet given in such rivers of living water as should issue forth to water the whole earth, even the Gentile world, not in the gifts of tongues, to which perhaps this promise principally refers. [3.] That the reason why the Holy Ghost was not given was because Jesus was not yet glorified. First, The death of Christ is sometimes called his glorification (ch. 13 31); for in his cross he conquered and triumphed. Now the gift of the Holy Ghost was purchased by the blood of Christ: this was the valuable consideration upon which the grant was grounded, and therefore till this price was paid (though many other gifts were bestowed upon its being secured to be paid) the Holy Ghost was not given. Secondly, There was not so much need of the Spirit, while Christ himself was here upon earth, as there was when he was gone, to supply the want of him. Thirdly, The giving of the Holy Ghost was to be both an answer to Christ’s intercession (ch. 14 16), and an act of his dominion; and therefore till he is glorified, and enters upon both these, the Holy Ghost is not given. Fourthly, The conversion of the Gentiles was the glorifying of Jesus. When certain Greeks began to enquire after Christ, he said, Now is the Son of man glorified, ch. 12 23. Now the time when the gospel should be propagated in the nations was not yet come, and therefore there was as yet no occasion for the gift of tongues, that river of living water. But observe, though the Holy Ghost was not yet given, yet he was promised; it was now the great promise of the Father, Acts 1 4. Though the gifts of Christ’s grace are long deferred, yet they are well secured: and, while we are waiting for the good promise, we have the promise to live upon, which shall speak and shall not lie.

MacArthur says:

… verse 39 is a prophecy.  He spoke of the spirit “whom those who believed in him were to receive” for the Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified.  The Holy Spirit couldn’t come until Jesus was glorified, ascended into Heaven.  Then he sent the Holy Spirit, and … when the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost – launched the church.  And then the river on the inside began to flow to the world.  And it happened instantaneously because immediately on the day of Pentecost, all those Galileans who didn’t know those multiple languages began to speak the wonderful works of God in all kinds of gentile languages as the river began to flow.

… Rivers of blessing begin to pour out of those believers early in Pentecost.  Peter preaches, the river starts, and 3000 people are saved.  They preach again; another 4000 are saved.  Tens of thousands are being saved.  In Jerusalem, it extends to Samaria, and we’re still living the history today.  The river is unleashed on the world through the indwelling Holy Spirit.  Only the Holy Spirit can make the river flow.  He’s the power behind all witness – all witness.

MacArthur concludes:

So Jesus says, “‘For those of you who come to me and drink, you will not only be satisfied, but you will become a river of life to the world.’”  That happened seven and a half months later on the day of Pentecost.  That is the work of the Holy Spirit.  What an amazing invitation to say not only will you have your soul totally satisfied forever with a water that’ll cause you to never thirst again – satisfy you forever, but your life will take on eternal significance.  What an amazing invitation.  That’s why I say this is the golden invitation of the Gospel of John.  Rivers of water, not reserved for super saints or some kind of reservoir but, belonging to all believers all of whom become fountains that turn into rivers.  What an invitation.

May all reading this enjoy a blessed Pentecost Sunday.

Eastertide finished the day before Pentecost. Next Sunday is Trinity Sunday. After that, until the first Sunday of Advent, where vestments are worn, celebrants wear green to mark what some denominations call ‘Ordinary Time’. Others designate those Sundays as being ‘after Pentecost’ or ‘after Trinity’.