And let the one who is thirsty come. Revelation 22:17, 18.

 In August of 2022, I published a commentary on Revelation 22:16. Here I use the Good News Bible, as it conveys that Jesus wanted John to share this information to the church bodies that existed and to future Christ followers; that includes you and me.

"I, Jesus, have sent my angel to announce these things to you in the churches. I am descended from the family of David; I am the bright morning star."
(Revelation 22:16 GNB)

You can find that post here - https://omharris.com/2022/08/20/to-witness-and-to-give-you-assurance-of-these-things-revelation-2216/

In that post, I focused on the idea that Jesus reminded the Apostle John that it was not just Jesus bearing witness to the hope of a future life with the Father, but John too was to bear witness. Primarily because we are human and have the ability to forget that we have a hope and why; and, in the case of John, who is now an old man exiled to the island of Patmos; a place that for all John knew, it was Rome's hope that he died there. As you can see God had other plans.

Having covered verse 16 we move on to Revelation 22:17.

Revelation 22:17 NASB “The Spirit and the bride say, "Come." And let the one who hears say, "Come." And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.”

So, knowing that we have Biblical witnesses testifying to the rapture of the church before the wrath of God is to be poured out and that our hope is in a life with the Father and an eternity of peace with Him.

Who is He talking to?

• “The one who hears.”

  This idea of the one who hears does not necessarily hold to those looking for salvation, as it can also apply to those, such as myself, who are hungry and want to find answers.

• “The one who is thirsty.”

  Thirst is the Greek word dipsaō, and surprise, it means to thirst. But what if my thirst is for more of the Lord and a deeper understanding of what is coming and when?

• Playing off the idea of thirst, He says, “the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.”

  Jesus used the term take. This is the Greek word lambánō, and, according to the Word Study Dictionary, can mean to take in whatever manner. Almost syn. with déchomai (G1209), to accept or receive, and yet distinct from it in that lambánō sometimes means to receive as merely a self-prompted action.

  A question, was our salvation truly without cost?

  No, as Jesus gave up His place next to the Father, His royalty, and His life to purchase our salvation. On our part, it costs us nothing (well, perhaps a touch of humility.)

But note how once the Spirit and the bride say come, the directive is for those who hear to say come. Come is the Greek word érchomai and also infers “to appear, make one’s appearance, come before the public; arise, come forth, show yourself, or influence; and, to be established, or become known.” Thayer's Greek Definitions.

“The Spirit and the bride say, "Come."

Who is the Spirit?

If I were to guess, I would have to say the Holy Spirit, but we don't want to guess; we want direct, accountable answers.

And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1:19-20 NASB)

This Holy Spirit is the same Spirit that baptizes in fire.

"As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Matthew 3:11 NASB)

Hold up here a second. John the baptizer told this crowd that the one who is coming after me is:

• Mightier than I,

  Having a grasp that He is, with His pinky finger, mightier in every way is wisdom.

• I am not fit to remove His sandals;

  Whether you are dealing with the Father, who is thankfully full of mercy, Jesus – the Son, who gave His life for us, or the Holy Spirit – the comforter who leads us and guides us into all knowledge; they are all Holy. Lacking that kind of submission and humility is dangerous.

• And, He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

  For the last several days, merely reading the Word fills my eyes with tears. There is power in the name of Jesus.

I will move on with this.

“The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.”
(Genesis 1:2 NASB)

So, even in the creation, we can see the Holy Spirit working.

The last thing I want to point out from Revelation 22:17 is the usage of the phrase “the water of life.”

“For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light.” (Psalms 36:9 NASB)

So the question is, out of whom is this fountain of life?

Many, of you, without thinking, would quickly say Jesus or God. Both would be correct.

King David, in Psalm 36:5, refers to Him as y^ehōwāh (this is the name by which He revealed Himself to Moses); while in Psalm 36:7 David refers to God as ĕlôhı̂ym; this is the Hebrew word 'meaning God, gods, judges, angels. Occurring more than 2,600 times in the Old Testament, this word commonly designates the one true God (Gen_1:1) and is often paired with God's unique name y^ehōwāh (H3068). Word Study Dictionary

If David is calling Him God and the water of life is flowing out of Him, then how do we get to Jesus as being the river of life?

Because Jesus said this of Himself and one of those examples was the Samaritan woman.

“Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water."” (John 4:10 NASB)

Jesus later explained how this works to a bunch of Jews who wanted to kill Him, as He had made Himself (their words) to be God by claiming to be the Son of God.

“"Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. "For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself;”
(John 5:25-26 NASB)

The Apostle Paul describes how we are washed with the Word of God, which is that water.

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.”
(Ephesians 5:25-27 NASB)

So, not only do the Father and the Son, being one and the same, have life in them and flowing out of them, but are also the Word of God, which we see in Paul's writings to the church in Ephesus above. The Apostle John opened his gospel by telling us that Jesus is the Word, the life, and the creative force in creation.

And finally, it does flow out from under both the throne of God and of the Lamb. Now there is something that I never noticed before.

“Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb,”
(Revelation 22:1 NASB)

If you do not know if you have this water of life inside of you, then I suggest you acknowledge the ABCs - of salvation.

At the cost of blood, you ransomed us for God. Revelation 5:8-14.

 

Then the Lamb, which looked as if it had been slaughtered, is now standing between the throne and the four living beings and among the twenty-four elders, right where I expected to see Jesus Christ, the warring Messiah. This lamb had seven horns and seven eyes. I quickly learned that what I saw represented the seven-fold Spirit of God sent out into every part of the earth. I strongly suspect this to be the Holy Spirit of God. This slaughtered lamb stepped forward and took the scroll from the right hand of the one sitting on the throne.

I adapted this paragraph above is from Revelation 5:6-7. Perhaps you recognized some of the terminologies, as we recently covered this section of scripture?

“When he took the scroll, the four living beings, and the twenty-four elders fell down in front of the Lamb. Each one held a harp and gold bowls filled with pieces of incense, which are the prayers of God's people; and they sang a new song, "You are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals; because you were slaughtered; at the cost of blood you ransomed for God persons from every tribe, language, people and nation.”
(Revelation 5:8-9 CJB)

• The four living beings.

  “In front of the throne was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal. In the center, around the throne, were four living beings covered with eyes in front and behind. The first living being was like a lion, the second living being was like an ox, the third living being had a face that looked human, and the fourth living being was like a flying eagle. Each of the four living beings had six wings and was covered with eyes inside and out; and day and night they never stop saying, "Holy, holy, holy is Adonai, God of heaven's armies the One who was, who is and who is coming!" And whenever the living beings give glory, honor, and thanks to the One sitting on the throne, to the One who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before the One sitting on the throne, who lives forever and ever, and worship him. They throw their crowns in front of the throne and say, "You are worthy, Adonai Eloheinu, to have glory, honor, and power because you created all things—yes, because of your will, they were created and came into being!”
  (Revelation 4:6-11 CJB)

• “Each one held a harp and gold bowls filled with pieces of incense, which are the prayers of God's people.”

  I would hope that you understand how vital your prayers are.

  Psalms 141:2 CJB “Let my prayer be like incense set before you, my uplifted hands like an evening sacrifice.”

  Proverbs 15:8 CJB “Adonai detests the sacrifices of the wicked but delights in the prayers of the upright.”

• “and they sang a new song,”

  When we get to Revelation 14, we will see the 144,000 singing a “new song,” which only they will know.

Page one.

Revelation 14:1-3 NASB Then I looked, and behold, the Lamb was standing on Mount Zion, and with Him, one hundred and forty-four thousand, having His name and the name of His Father written on their foreheads. (2) And I heard a voice from heaven, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder, and the voice which I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps. (3) And they *sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders and no one could learn the song except the one hundred and forty-four thousand who had been purchased from the earth.

While Revelation 14 is in Greek, Psalm 40, where King David is speaking, is in Hebrew, yet both convey the idea of a new song, and both can also mean fresh. You might think these 144,000 had already been singing some form of song unto the Lord.

Psalms 40:1-3 NASB “... I waited patiently for the LORD; And He inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God; Many will see and fear And will trust in the LORD.”

• “You are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals.”

  In the previous post, we talked about Revelation 5:4-5, where John is weeping because there was no one worthy to open the seals. One of the 24 elders tell John to stop crying because there is one, the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Well, that's quite a visual, and yet what does John see? A lamb that looks as if it had just been slain.

  The bottom line is this, Jesus Christ was and is worthy, and the Revelation is about to tell you why.

• “because you were slaughtered; at the cost of blood you ransomed for God persons from every tribe, language, people and nation.”

  He wasn’t merely whipped, although that alone killed most people; He was bludgeoned - beaten with fists; had his beard pulled out, a crown of thorns was pressed into His skull, and then the cross arm was lashed to His severely wounded back, stretching out His arms making it impossible to prevent more injury to His head and face as He fell. All of this was an aspect of the price He paid on our behalf.

  1 Corinthians 6:20 tells us that we have been bought with a price.

  Hebrews 2:9 informs us that Jesus, because of the suffering of death, was crowned with glory and honor so that by the grace of God, he might experience death for everyone so that we don't have to. Common sense tells us that every person must die sometime, so the author of Hebrews must be talking about something other than physical death.

  Hebrews 2:14, in the NLT translation, explains, “Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death.” Since the devil's only hope is to bring about a spiritual death, which is separation from God, we must understand that Jesus’ actions in death restored us.

Page two.

Acts 13:38-39 conveys the idea that through Him, we have forgiveness of sins, and through Him, everyone who believes is freed from all things the Law could not free us from.

Ephesians 1:7 establishes that in Him we have redemption because of this blood He shed, not only that, but we have the forgiveness of our trespasses; and, He uses the riches of His grace as the standard.

No one was left out of this deal; how is it that many will not accept this love, grace, and acceptance?

It is all about free will, and therefore, their choice to refuse.

If you have chosen to follow after Jesus, you are deemed a kingdom and priests to our God.

Revelation 5:10 KJV And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.

Hebrews 12:22 tells us that the number of angels is a countless multitude.

Revelation 5:11 NASB Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders, and the number of them was myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands,

Angels, living creatures, the elders, and every created thing cries out; Worthy is the lamb that was slain.

“saying with a loud voice, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing." And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, "To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever." And the four living creatures kept saying, "Amen." And the elders fell down and worshiped.” (Revelation 5:12-14 NASB)

When I opened our look into Revelation chapter five, I asked why wouldn’t the church be the focus of chapter five since chapter four is a definitive boundary between the church age and the time of wrath. The answer to the question is that the entirety of the Revelation is focused on Jesus. What we have also learned is that the elders represent the church.

The problem for us humanoids is that we continue to apply our human emotions to God repeatedly; this is a pointless effort. God is not affected by our human emotions, although, through the Son, He can undoubtedly comprehend our feelings but not be ruled by them.

Now, here we are, represented by the elders, along with every living creature, crying with a loud voice,

“Worthy is the Lamb that was slain

to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.”

Along with this cry,

“To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb,

be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.”

Page three.