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In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            Did you ever wake up in the middle of the night with a terrible thirst? Your mouth is dry, and you have to have water right at that moment. Or maybe you were in a hot, dry place, and no matter how much water you drank, it didn’t seem like it could ever quench your thirst. Or you went on a hike and forgot your water bottle in the car, so you had to wait until you got back to get a drink. We all know what it’s like to be thirsty, to need water. The Scriptures say that everyone, whether they know it or not, is thirsting for life. Everyone is thirsting for life. Everyone is seeking, searching, looking for life. Whatever that is that you think will give you life; wherever you look, or wherever you turn when you are trying to find life, that is your god. We’re all trying to satisfy our thirst and we will try almost anything.

            God says through the prophet Jeremiah, “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken, abandoned Me, the source, the fountain of living water; and they have hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (2:3). So the people had abandoned the source of living water, unending and eternal, and they had dug a hole, constructed a container, to try and collect water from somewhere else. If you forsake the source, and you’re not the source, then all you can do is try to get water from somewhere else. But the things that people construct to gather that water cannot hold it. They’re cracked and broken, like trying to hold water in your hands. Thirstier and thirstier, they wander in the wilderness.

            Though God cut them off from the river flowing from the center of Eden, He did not leave them without His living water. He puts the source of living water in the middle of them. The Son takes on flesh and lives among them. He asks the Samaritan woman at the well for a drink; she says, why are you asking me? He says, If you knew who it was who was asking you, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water, and you would never be thirsty again. None of those old gods can satisfy your thirst. I, who speak to you, am He. So He stands up on the last and great day of the Feast of Booths, when the people of Israel were to construct shelters of sticks and branches, and remember how God had led them through the wilderness, and rejoice in God. He stands up and cries out with a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me; whoever believes in Me, let him come to Me and drink. As the Scripture says, ‘Out of His heart, out of His side, will flow rivers of living water.’ He said this about the Holy Spirit, who had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.”

He is the rock in the wilderness, where God stood, and He was struck, and water came out for the people to drink. Just as He was when He was lifted up and glorified on the cross, and He became that broken cistern, having poured out His life for the sake of people who had abandoned Him. He said—the source of living water said, “I thirst.” Like Psalm 63: O God, You are My God. Earnestly I seek You. My soul thirsts for You, My flesh faints for You, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water (63:1). And then He said, “It is finished.” And He bowed His head and handed over the Spirit. It is not just that He died. John does not say that He gave up His spirit. He says, “He handed over the Spirit.” And then the soldier pierced His side and rivers of water and blood flowed from Him. And then, when He rises from the dead, He breathes on His disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whatever sins you forgive, they are forgiven. Whatever sins you leave in place, remain in place.” And then, just as He had promised, the fullness of the Holy Spirit is poured out and the apostles are filled with the Spirit. It is all water language. So it’s no coincidence when the people say, What shall we do? That Peter says, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you shall receive the Holy Spirit. This promise is for you and for your children, for all those who are far off. If you are baptized, the Spirit has been poured out on you; you have been filled with the Holy Spirit, who quenches your thirst for God and life, which is the same thing. John says in his first letter, “There are three that testify: the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three agree.” And their testimony is that “God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son does not have life” (1 John 4:7-8, 11-12). To have the Spirit is to have the living water, to have the Son and the Father, and to have life.

The more you drink, by hearing the words of Jesus that the Spirit brings, the more He quenches your thirst for life; the more you drink, the less you want all the things that this world calls life, all the false promises about what will quench that thirst. The thirst has been in you since the Garden, but it can only be quenched by the river of life that flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb, the living water that flows from the side of the one who has been raised from the dead. The living one pours out the Spirit, and His people are filled with the life the Spirit gives. If anyone is thirsty, Jesus says, let him come to Me; whoever believes in Me, let him come and drink. Come and drink.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). Amen.

– Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 5/22/26