COME,
YE THIRSTY ONES!
By B. B. Caldwell
(1899-1976)
“HO, EVERY ONE that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no
money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and
without price” (Isaiah 55:1).
ARE YOU
THIRSTY? If so, your thirst is your
invitation. This is a promise to the Lord’s people. Dead sinners never
thirst! Dead sinners never respond. You
can preach the gospel to a dead sinner and it amounts to no more than pouring
water on a duck’s back, unless Almighty God quickens that sinner and makes him
alive to the Gospel. We waste time pulling, begging and pleading with alien
dead sinners. God Himself must intervene and make the first move—quicken,
arouse and deal with the spiritually dead sinner, if that sinner is to ever
benefit from this invitation, “Ho, every one that thirsteth,
come ye to the waters!” As it is my manner of preaching, let me ask and
answer several questions.
I. Do you understand the condition of natural
man? Let me enumerate about 10
things. 1. The sinner is totally dead in the spiritual realm.
What does a dead man need? Does he need a mere invitation? No, he needs the
life-giving power of God. (Eph 2:1;5)
2. He
has no eyes to see the glory of God. It is a high act of stupidity to try
to get a man with no eyes to see a picture on the wall—in the same way, it is
spiritually silly and stupid to think you can get an alien, dead sinner to see
anything spiritual.
3. The
sinner has no ears to hear the voice of God. The only voice he can hear is
a physical or natural one. But when God quickens you and gives you the
spiritual ear, you will begin to hear spiritual truth.
4. A sinner has no heart to perceive the things
of God. If he were to read the Bible for a million years, he would only
gain natural knowledge of historical facts but no ability to conceive of
anything spiritually.
5. That sinner has no thirst for the living
waters of the Gospel. “Ho,
every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters!” That
is a limited invitation. There is no general invitation in the Bible—every
promise is limited and specified for a certain class of people. This invitation
is limited to the thirsty—nobody but the thirsty are invited.
6. He has no desire to know Christ. Jesus,
in the days of His flesh, preached the Gospel and sent out His apostles to
preach the Gospel. Still the men at large had no desire to come to Him or to
know Him.
7. The natural man has no need to come to
Christ. Why should he come to Christ? He has ability to make money, to work
in this world and to do a lot of things. Being a natural man he is only looking
for things to satisfy his flesh. He sees no need to come to Christ.
8. Then I would
point out to you that he has no fear of
God before his eyes. You can preach to the natural unregenerate man about
the horrors of Hell, the awfulness of the Great Judgment Day and a never-ending
eternity, but it does not affect him any more than preaching to a hog or a
cow.
9. Natural men have no protection from Satanic powers and deception. Only the providence of God
keeps them from going to the depths. The “strong man, Satan” keeps them in his
service and under his control.
10. That sinner by nature dwells in a dry and a
barren land, and he loves to have it so. Oh, what an awful picture of the
spiritual condition and total inability of the natural man!
“In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried,
saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink” (John 7:37). If God has given you a thirst
for Christ, there is the invitation! But
it is a solemn fact that when our Lord performed miracles or fed the hungry, He
had great crowds, but when He turned to preach the truth to them, to call the
hungry and thirsty to the Gospel feast, they all forsook Him and fled away!
Read John chapter six.
II. What is a Gospel Invitation? In Matthew 11:28-30 He tells you that
His Gospel invitation is fourfold.
1. It is bread for the hungry. Are you hungry? “No, sir!” Well, you are not invited.
2. It is water for the thirsty. Are you thirsty for Christ? “No, not now!” You are not invited.
3. This invitation is salvation for the lost. Are you lost? “I don’t
know what you mean!” Then you are not invited.
4.
It is rest to the weary. Are you tired and sick of the weariness of life,
tired of listening to these old apostate preachers, tired of spending your time
and money in that which satisfies not? Then Jesus said—not, Go
and hunt yourself another church—but “Come to me!” Come to a Person!
Isn’t that wonderful?
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and
lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy,
and my burden is light” (Matthew
III. Then I ask, Who is it that Invites Sinners? “Ho, every one that thirsteth,
come ye to the waters.” Compare John 7:37, “If any man
thirst, let him come unto me and drink.” In John chapter seven
we can easily see some of the characteristics of the One who invites sinners.
1. Jesus the Prophet of Jehovah invites you. He is the One who has been
given the authority of Heaven to speak the very words of God.
2. It is Jesus Christ the Mighty God incarnate who invites you. That ought
to be interesting to a poor sinner. If you should receive an invitation from
the President to come and visit him in the White House, with all expenses paid,
I believe you would be on your way to
3. It is Jesus Christ the One Mediator between God and men who invites you.
Here is an invitation from the Lord Himself, inviting hungry, needy sinners to
come freely to the Gospel feast! Have you ever done a study on how far apart the
sinner is from God, and then remembered that there is only One Almighty
Mediator provided to bridge the gap! Notice 1
IV. Who is Invited to Come? Let us look at
this again more definitely. Is everybody
invited? No. I hear it preached on all sides that all men are invited, but I
find no Bible foundation for that. I do, however, find an invitation that ought
to take you in, my listener. Listen: I hear of this “universal gospel,” but I
know nothing about it. I hear much about a “universal invitation,” but I know
nothing about it. Ladies and gentlemen, who are invited? The Scriptures are
clear, and I want to show you the truth.
1. The thirsty are invited. “Every one that thirsteth.” That ought to be clear. Are you thirsty?
Be honest—are you thirsty? Then you are invited to come to the waters. Your
thirst is your invitation. I have no right to indiscriminately invite you—but
if you are thirsty, then the God who created that thirst invites you to come to
Him. Oh, the thirsty ones are invited!
2. The child of God is invited. The blessings of grace belong properly to
God’s children.
3. Those who have been born again, who have been made alive to your need—you
are invited by the God who gave you that new life. Then why don’t you come?
Don’t wait on or trust a feeling. Your thirst is real and greater than any
fleshly emotions. So come to the Giver of this water! Have you been born of the
Spirit? You perhaps do not know this for certain, but you cannot doubt that you
are thirsty. That thirst is a birth certificate into the
4. “Let him that is athirst come. And
whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (Revelation
When I was in
V. What Makes a Man Both Willing and Thirsty? Notice it says “whosoever will” and “him that
thirsts.” What is it that makes a man willing
and thirsty, and brings him to the
point of such need? What has happened to that man?
Such a sinner has been quickened,
made alive, born again, given a spiritual nature. The one who thirsts is the
one who has been born again by the Spirit of God; nobody else is thirsty. I
remember about 50 years ago when I began preaching, you would see people get
under Holy Ghost conviction, get so thirsty for God. People began to pray and
cry to God under the great burden of their need of Christ. Churches were
filled, with people hanging out the windows, coming in great numbers to seek
the Lord and mourn their way to the Saviour. You
never saw such days! Where are they
today? No conviction of sin, nobody
thirsting! Has the Holy Spirit been removed in His work of conviction of sin?
The field of the church has been filled up with tares, and the houses are
filled with dogs and the barns filled with goats, while the pulpits are
occupied by the seed of the serpent. God is no longer working among the
churches as He did in the days of old. But you can be sure that when God works,
when He quickens a sinner, He creates a great thirst in his soul, gives him
eyes to see the glory of God, gives him ears to hear the voice of God, and He
gives him a heart to perceive that he is lost, that he is without God and
without hope and far away from the Redeemer. Then the great problem that arises
in his soul is, “How could God save an old sinner like me?” Then cries come
from burdened hearts, there is an awakening and a moving in the land, with
people wanting to know the way to
VI. When are We to Come? When God quickens you
and makes you alive, then there are two words in the New Testament that tell
you when to come.
1. One word is “NOW.” “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold,
now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).
2. The other word is “TODAY.” We read in Hebrews 3:7-8, “The
Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice,
Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the
wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty
years.” To those who hear His voice, God has given them ears. To those
who see their lost condition and need, God has opened their eyes. How are you
going to know these things unless God gives you a heart to perceive? If you can
hear His voice, that is the time to not harden your hearts, but come to Him.
And our seventh question is:
VII. What will be the Results of your coming to Christ and drinking of the
waters that shall never run dry?
We read in John chapter 7 again,
verses 38 and 39, “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly
shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he
of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy
Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified).”
Notice this is to him who believes “as the scripture hath said”—not
just any kind of way or any shallow belief, but a sound scriptural way! In this
passage we can see five things about the rivers that are going to flow forth.
This indicates that man who has come to the well of
2. And rivers
often overflow, so you must respect
them.
3. Then notice
that rivers have the mastery of things.
You can stop up a well but you cannot stop up a river! The early Christians
were put in jail and quieted for a time, but after a while the waters got to
flowing out and reaching others, as the river of the Spirit flows and has the
mastery.
4. Rivers will cleanse and purify. Put a dead animal in
a well and the water will be contaminated for a long time to come, but suppose
you throw that dead dog or cat in a river—the waters will carry it along until
it is broken on the rocks, cast ashore or dissolved, soon freeing the river of
all the contamination. And the mighty river just keeps on flowing along.
5. Another thing about rivers is that they increase in size as they flow;
other smaller streams come to join them and on they go until nothing can stand
before them.
6. They go on
until they are emptied in the mighty
ocean of eternity.
7. Rivers
are a blessing wherever they flow. The little animals and the birds can
come and drink from either side of the river, but you will never see them
drinking from a well. To get the water out of the well requires hard work and a
rope or a pump, while rivers flow freely and life flourishes on both sides. The
animals drink, the little flowers grow along the river, and refreshing is
supplied everywhere the river flows.
Are you a river, my friend, or only a well?
Abraham, we read, was a well digger. Isaac was a well un-stopper. The
Philistines came along and stopped up the wells, but Isaac cleaned them out and
opened them up again. You know, a lot of the Lord’s people are no bigger than a
well, and they often get stopped up or contaminated. If you are going to have
water, you have to clean the well and pump it up to the surface, and often
waste a lot of time priming the old pump just to get a little flow of water.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Lord moved upon and transformed some of our
little wells into mighty rivers! How does a well become a river? It just starts
overflowing and keeps on flowing! Then the well will be purified and become a
blessing wherever it goes. Oh, that we could be rivers flowing forth to a dry
and thirsty land! Oh, that people could see the transformation!
And the invitation is very simple: come and drink without money and without
price! Yes, it cost Heaven something to give you this water, but it is free
to you. Oh, why do men not come and drink? Why don’t they respond and come to
the Heavenly table which is spread with the good things of the Gospel? They
neither hunger nor thirst for these spiritual blessings, until God moves upon
their spirits and quickens them. In their nature they can only continue as
alien, dead sinners.