And so take, my God, this occasion to
yourself, be glorified before your saints, and have
your own heart warmed.
We bless you, we give you praise, in
Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, I have valiantly looked to the Lord
all through the week, even last night till
late.
All I knew was a certain text, a
certain theme of paradise and the waters of
life that issue out from under the throne.
It came at the very commencement of these
days, and interestingly, what is behind me in
this backdrop sort of is a depiction of
that paradise.
But I was waiting for the Lord to
amplify, and the amplification has not come.
So, I'll read the text, we'll just look
to the Lord.
If there's anything that is to issue from
you, a thought, a word, a comment, we'll
see what he will give.
I've got two Bibles, a little book by
Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
But you should have seen my bed last
night, piled that high with every commentary that
I could find.
And it's remarkable, when you're on to something,
how little the commentators have to say.
I took down my index of all my
Karl Barth commentaries, which gives every scripture that
he's used.
And it comes to Ezekiel 47, and maybe
one or two scant references, and not at
all what I would have liked to have
heard.
And for others of them, they even fall
short of that.
So I think the Lord himself has got
to, on the spot, say something to us.
Out of Revelation chapter 22, the final book
of the Bible, that begins, And he showed
me a pure river of water of life,
clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne
of God and of the Lamb.
In the midst of the street of it,
and on either side of the river, was
there the tree of life, which bare twelve
manna of fruits, and yielded her fruit every
month.
And the leaves of the tree were for
the healing of the nations.
And there shall be no more curse, but
the throne of God and of the Lamb
shall be in it, and his servants shall
serve him, and they shall see his face,
and his name shall be in their foreheads.
There shall be no night there, they shall
need no candle, neither light of the sun,
for the Lord God giveth them light, and
they shall reign forever and ever.
Amen.
Well somehow the word throne kind of, I
won't say leaped off the page, but it's
mentioned twice here, as having, indicating the locus
of which these waters issue.
And I don't know what to make of
that.
But that somehow the sovereignty of God, the
rule of God, the reign of God, has
to do with the waters of life.
So to the degree that we ourselves are
submitted to that Lordship, we also have access
to these waters.
And though this is the description of the
millennial age and the glory of it, there's
something that is already available of these waters
and of this life, for as many of
us as are yielded to the throne.
I want to come back to that, I
don't know how.
Excuse my faltering, I'm just feeling my way.
But if we go back to the first
reference in Genesis to the tree of life,
the expulsion from the garden, we have the
tragedy at the beginning, and the great consummation
at the end.
And everything is between these two great polar
points.
So looking at Genesis chapter 3, after the
fall of Adam and Eve, verse 22, the
Lord God said, Behold, the man has become
as one of us to know good and
evil, and now lest he put forth his
hand and take also of the tree of
life and eat and live forever.
Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from
the garden of Eden to till the ground
from whence he was taken.
So he drove out the man, and he
placed at the east of the garden of
Eden cherubims and a flaming sword, which turned
every way to keep the way of the
tree of life.
Now why doesn't it just say to keep
the tree of life?
So the word the way of the tree
of life intrigued me, but I have not
found a commentator anywhere who has anything to
say about this particular phrase, the way of
the tree of life.
And I know that it's not happenstance or
inadvertent that it's employed.
It means something, and it means something of
such a kind that God will jealously guard
it by cherubim.
And the cherubim are angelic beings whose function
is to God what is holy and sacred,
particularly around the ark of God or the
throne of God.
We spoke at the prophetical school about the
cherubim on either side of the mercy seat,
looking to each other face to face and
down through the lid upon which the blood
of the eternal sacrifice is sprinkled, down to
the righteous requirement in the ark below, and
that that ark has been called by Israel
or known by it as also the throne
of God.
So the ark of God, the throne of
God, is the domain over which these angelic
creatures guard.
I think that when Isaiah saw the Lord
high and lifted up, he saw him in
an enthronement, and these angelic creatures were crying
holy, holy, holy around that very same presence.
So I think I'm benefited by starting in
Revelation and seeing what is the eternal blessedness
of God in the clear waters of life
that shall flow out to the nations, and
the tree of life that bears fruit in
all of its variety every month and leaves
for the healing of the nations as being
the release or the availability of what was
positionally available to Adam, but which he could
not access because he ate from another tree,
and God kept him from the tree of
life lest he live forever.
So the tree of life, the waters of
life, are suggestive of something ultimate and so
sacred, life itself, it's the life of God,
and not only eternal but abounding, as we
will soon see in another text where the
same river of life, starting out with a
trickle, rises up from the ankles to the
knee to the thigh and then becomes waters
too deep to pass over.
So I wrote a little note here at
the bottom of my page.
Will we understand the glory of the clear
waters of life that will flow out from
under the throne and out to the nations
and blessing the tree of life and making
it fruitful if we have not a sufficient
sense of the tragedy of the loss of
that Edenic and paradisical condition that was forfeited
by Adam and remains forfeited until every son
of Adam, by the blood of the greater
Adam, is healed of that breach occasioned by
that Adamic sin.
The pity is that many of us who
are in the second Adam and need not
wait for the millennial flow of the river
of life are not accessing what is available
to us even presently, and that maybe it's
proportionate to our own proximity to the throne,
that somehow the word throne and the waters
of life issuing from under the throne are
more than just a little picturesque description but
have an uttermost significance which I've been breaking
my head all these days to find out
and the Lord has not been disposed to
show me, only to offer to you as
suggestion, as prophetic intimation, that there's a profound
conjunction between this throne and the waters of
life and the tree of life so watered
by those waters that everywhere that this river
of life passes, life itself is activated and
commenced.
And so that we have access, I'm not
saying thus saith the Lord, I'm just hinting
prophetically that we have access to these waters
and to this life and to its abundance,
to its prolific source, to the degree that
we have access or proximity to the throne
itself.
If we are not totally yielded to that
throne, then who is?
If there are variances of self-will and
independence of heart, mind, spirit, whatever that is
that keeps us from the total adhesion to
the lordship of Christ to the uttermost, to
that degree also we are kept from that
flow.
Some of us are getting by minimally, some
adequately, but very few bountifully.
And I think that the issue is the
issue of the throne.
And God is so concerned about that, he's
not allowing cheap access and the cherubim, God,
this very location to keep the way of
the tree of life.
Not just the tree, the way of the
tree of life.
You help me, you think on that, you
ponder that.
My other text, in Ezekiel 47, again,
very much echoes the remarkable culmination of the
whole redemptive drama that we cited in reading
from chapter 22 of Revelation, is picked up
by Ezekiel in 47, who's being shown about
by an angel called the man.
And the man brought me back to the
entrance of the temple, and I saw water
coming out from under the threshold of the
temple toward the east, for the temple faced
east.
The water was coming down from under the
south side of the temple, south of the
altar.
The altar, the temple, the throne, the tabernacle,
the ark of God, the tent of Shem,
all of these are indexes referring to one
locus and one reality.
It's where God is, in his supreme sovereignty,
lordship, and kingship.
And the water's issue out from under, I
like that phrase.
And down from under, there's an under.
I don't know, maybe there are meteorological reasons
why water issues from under, but I like
the under.
I like the things that are not visible.
I like the subterranean depths.
I like the secret history of a believer
with God.
The things that are in the deeps is
the place also where the water issues up
and rises up from.
So he then brought me in verse 2,
out through the north gate and led me
to the outside, to the outer gate facing
east, and the water was flowing from the
south side.
As the man went eastward with a measuring
line in his hand, he measured off a
thousand cubits and then led me through water
that was ankle deep.
He measured off another thousand cubits and led
me through water that was knee deep.
He measured off another thousand and led me
through water that was up to the waist.
He measured off another thousand, but now it
was a river and I could not cross
because the water had risen and was deep
enough to swim in, a river that no
one could cross.
And he asked of me, son of man,
do you see this?
Then he led me back to the river.
And when I arrived there, I saw a
great number of trees on each side of
the river.
He said to me, this water flows toward
the eastern region and goes down into the
Arabah, some kind of cleft or indentation, a
kind of a rift, even in the geography
of Israel to this day.
Where it enters the sea, the sea is
the Dead Sea.
When it empties into the sea, the water
becomes fresh.
I don't know if you've ever been to
the Dead Sea or on the Dead Sea.
I won't say in the Dead Sea because
you can't actually submerge yourself into it.
It's so laden with salts and chemicals that
it's buoyant.
And everybody wants to take a picture reading
a newspaper on your back, on top of
the Dead Sea.
So what kind of flow and gush will
purify those waters is a graphic picture of
the power of what issues from under the
throne of God and flows out into the
deep crevices and cracks and finds its way
to the lowest point on the face of
the earth, the Dead Sea.
It's dead, it's moribund, it's closed in.
It has no value except its chemical value
or the curiosity of tourists.
But there's no life on it or in
it.
There cannot be.
And when it empties into the sea, the
water there becomes fresh.
I always marvel at how much God can
say in so few words.
How terse God is.
I would have at least spent a paragraph
amplifying what happens when the waters of life
touch the place of death.
No, it's just the waters there become fresh.
Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the
river flows.
There will be large numbers of fish because
this water flows there and makes the salt
water fresh.
So where the river flows, everything will live.
Fishermen will stand along the shore from Ein
Gedi to Ein Egalim.
And there, there will be places for spreading
nets.
The fish will be of many kinds like
the fish of the Great Sea.
But the swamps and marshes will not become
fresh.
They will be left for salt.
Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on
both banks of the river.
Their leaves will not wither, nor will their
fruit fail.
Every month they will bear because the water
from the sanctuary flows to them.
Their fruit will serve for food and their
leaves for healing.
I could sit down now and just to
read these texts is to be blessed.
But if these texts are also symbolic as
well as graphic and descriptive and that we
ourselves can bear fruit in season because the
waters of life flow through us copiously in
proportion to our adherence to the throne and
that it bears fruit in season and variable
and every month different and the leaves also
from the tree are healing for the nations
then there's a remarkable application for us as
believers.
And it's an application that does not have
to wait for the millennium.
It's available now.
But we see little evidence or application of
this because I think that we're more or
less satisfied with mixed waters or stagnant waters
or waters that are not even life-giving.
And it shows up in the way we
conduct ourselves.
I guess religion is a good word that
describes stagnant activity that ostensibly is in the
name of God but it's rarely ever fresh.
It's predictable.
It's hackneyed.
It's cliched.
It's you know what you're going to get
and you don't get much.
It's not life.
Somewhere in our discussion in these days and
we've had back-to-back schools and now
a convocation we took a moment to celebrate
the word life and to mention that T.
Austin Sparks, if you know that name one
of the most significant modern-day commentators godly
man and a contemporary and a friend of
Watchman Nee wrote as the conclusion of his
Believing and Seeking Life I forgot the title
of the booklet but it was something like
Life vs.
Death in which he said, now that I
survey my whole lifetime in the Lord and
my ministerial service and all of the issues
and things that I've touched and explored and
expressed what it amounts to in the last
analysis is a conflict between life and death.
The whole of the cosmic drama in which
we are engaged is the issue of life
vs.
death.
And I went on to say that we
need to recognize the forms of death because
we live with them so long that they
become so fixed and so normative and almost
acceptable that we don't contend for life.
Any restriction of life is a form of
death moodiness, temperament, physical bodily ailments anything repressive,
melancholy depression itself are forms of death there's
a prince of death that wants everywhere to
contend against life we have two princes the
prince of life and the prince of death
and I don't feel that we are vehement
enough for life we are not asserting the
primacy of life we're not contending for life
and we're allowing the forms of death which
are more abundant, restrictive to affect untold millions
and that they live so long with it
they think it normative.
Jesus said I've come to bring you life
and that more abundantly.
So I love these references to the waters
of life that gush out and so not
only prolific but so powerful that when they
come even to the dead place death has
got to bow death has got to go
out and life comes in and life of
such a kind that forms of life flourish
in it even the variety of the fish
that are described here that fishermen can line
up from Ein Gedi to Ein Galim with
their nets and not take it all and
that the forms of it are as variable
as is to be found in the great
Mediterranean Sea itself in a place that was
formerly known for its death it's the triumph
of life and we don't have to wait
for the millennium to enjoy it you dear
saints God is wanting evidence now if it
comes up from under those are the deep
places so you know these texts deserve close
examination as for example after the angel this
man leads the prophet to an excursion of
viewing this remarkable water of life that begins
only minimally ankle deep and rules out a
thousand cubits more a thousand cubits more a
thousand cubits more I like the number one
thousand the first contribution to the New York
work was from the Hutterite colony from which
John and the precious saints come today it
was a thousand dollars for the New York
work and I went thank you Lord because
a thousand is the number of ultimate measure
have you ever given ultimately?
or have you given stingily?
do you measure it out by the inches
or the teaspoons?
or lavishly?
our God is lavish and a thousand cubits
is ultimate measure and the question is that
while this prophet is being shown the different
depths of these waters he himself is not
required to enter as if the angel is
showing him the options and allowing him to
choose just how far in he wants to
go and to what depth he wants to
move and live and have his being where
are you this morning you dear saints?
I venture to say if you're representative of
the church in the world there are some
here who are not even up to their
ankles you're just content to play footsie with
your toes and get a little scintillation but
get back onto that beach quick enough where
security is the known and fixed categories of
your established evangelical and fundamental faith but to
go in up to the ankles is already
a little risque how about a thousand cubits
more?
up to the knees which is of course
the place of prayer but no longer the
place of religious prayer the place of godly
prayer of prayers that go beyond what you
would know to pray and to ask because
up till now your prayers have been timid
and prescribed and predictable and having to do
with you and your interest and your need
which of course is valid God already knows
it but he lovingly and patiently hears your
petitions but we don't go beyond them because
we've not been in deep enough into the
waters of life have you been up to
your knees?
it'll change your prayer life and you would
think well what further?
isn't that enough?
prayer is so critical?
no there's yet a thousand cubits more up
to the waist well what shall we say
about the waist or the loins this belt
around here that has to do with our
sexual what?
identity and sense of power authority the blood
cells in the hip that's where the lord
touched Jacob when he wrestled with him the
one place that left him crippled was in
the bone marrow in the knit where the
blood itself forms and where the man hangs
his holster or his cell phone I'm still
not a favorite in the Philippines in that
night when I spoke and the CEO the
young whiz kid another J-5th success was
swaggering around the platform with his cell phone
on his hip it might just as well
have been a revolver I thought does he
need to make a phone call during the
service?
is there some critical thing that requires his
attention for which he needs to be so
girded?
you know what the message was that night?
the lord came down on the back of
an ass upon which never man sat that
the way into the kingdom and the thing
for which the world is waiting to cry
out Hosanna to the king is a kingdom
that will come as the king came in
lowliness and meekness and debility and foolishness tottering
on a little beastie upon which never man
sat but when he sees swagger and arrogance
of those things on our hip in which
we hoist and put our thumbs in it's
the antithesis of God if he's not got
us up to that place in those waters,
he's not got us but who wants to
go in that deep?
because then you can feel the waters rising
and they're surging and they're battering against your
frame you liked it when it was up
to the ankles even the knees you could
bear that because you still had your feet
on terra firma and you were in control
you had it all lined out but when
you go in up to your waist you
begin to move with the pulsation of the
water the flow and the power of it
itself and it gets a little frightening how
many of us have gone in that deep?
because there's a man with a measuring rod
who's measuring out this morning a thousand cubits
more and until we go in how shall
those that are dying receive the benefit?
where are the words of life that shall
issue from us that we get in the
measure that we're taken up into the life
of God and into his powerful surging life
not only that that buoys us up from
without but from within maybe we're drinking and
taking in and issuing from up from under
the things that we speak and say and
do as much as we are also being
moved from without by those waters.
We have as much the water of life
within as we are giving ourselves to be
submitted to the waters of life without if
we're submitting ourselves it's up to you it
was up to this prophet he wasn't required
to follow he brought him back to the
shore as if to say ok now you've
seen the varying options of depth how far
are you willing to go and of course
the last is the most terrifying of all
because there you can no longer stand waters
too deep to pass over and you yourself
are lifted up and carried by it not
where you will but where it will terrifying
but glorious because those waters now will move
you into the place of God's own election
choice and the fruit that you'll bear will
be variable and something that you'll not appoint
for yourself you don't even know what you're
saying all you know is you've got a
text and you'll stand up and trust that
the Lord himself is going to carry it
and bring it in application though you yourself
by your own exercise could not obtain it
how do you like that as a mode
of life and being it's the way of
the tree of life that God guards it's
a way a little book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
creation and fall precious godly I almost say
prophet whose life ended at the end of
a Nazi noose a week before the end
of World War II who could have had
safety in New York or London but chose
to go back to Germany, face the music
and be a witness in a nation that
it was spiraling downward and out under such
evil as had not been seen in the
earth in modern times and finally became its
victim but even while he's dead he lives
who has not read his book on discipleship
what's the title of that The Cost of
Discipleship and Life Together a classic primer on
what community means by a man who learned
the lesson having to flee from Nazi discovery
and persecution in such an intensity of life
underground down from under came such a water
of life as to inspire and encourage characters
like myself and others who have gone beyond
their ankles and into waters called community not
knowing what it means or how to obtain
it not having been there heretofore so he
writes some interesting things I haven't doped it
out yet but maybe it'll say much more
to you than it has to me though
I know it's cogent he's talking about Adam
who recognizes that his death consists in having
to live before God without life from God
you can retire Dietrich after that one statement
you can hang up your hat to say
that is enough let me read that again
Adam is expelled from the garden he has
eaten from the wrong tree and now he's
forbidden to touch the tree of life lest
he live forever and the issue of the
tree of life dear saints though I'm no
expert I'm a novice feeling my way is
not only the issue of perpetuity it's the
issue of prolificity it's the issue of abundant
living it's a dynamic it not only prolongs
your life but affects the character of the
life as it's lived it's an abundance and
God would not allow him to touch it
lest he live forever and live in a
way now that he has come to know
as God he would be able to live
like God he had to be cast out
and the cherubim with their flaming swords how
jealous God is to protect this remarkable tree
which unless it does go forth and bear
it's fruit unless the leaves of it are
applied to the wounds and the devastations of
the nations they continue to suffer that degradation
nothing is going to heal them that will
be issued from the United Nations or any
other well meaning organization or source the nations
dear saints have been ravaged there will be
no healing for Croatia and Serbia and Kosovo
and the Bantu tribes in Rwanda or Israel
and Palestinians until the leaves from off this
tree are applied to the nations this is
it has to be symbolic what do you
want blood?
but you have to understand the remarkable symbolism
and that how jealous God is over it
and waits for that paradisical consummation of the
age where the waters flow freely the river
of life and water the trees who give
the abundant fruit but also the leaves that
heal the nations so what is Adam's dilemma?
he's caught glimpse of something but he's not
allowed now to touch it and death has
come in as penalty for sin what is
that death?
it consists in having to live before God
without life from God well you dear Adam
you'd be better off as an atheist it
would save you from the quandary of knowing
about God and not being able to live
for God but the only way to live
for God is to live by God by
the waters of life and if you can't
have access to that what a grim prospect
to just be religious and out of your
own unaided energy and naturalness seek to make
some kind of a show or a performance
that is so pathetically limited that it's nothing
less than death itself will you understand me
when I say that nowhere is death more
evident than in some tired Pentecostal church that
once knew the Holy Spirit and has reduced
it now to a formula of do you
have it?
it's a double death I hold my breath
if I have got to come into such
an environment because it's not just death of
something that had never been known or obtained
but once having known it and having obtained
it and having lost it and now seeking
to emulate the evidence of that life is
so pathetic so crunching so deathly that you
wonder how congregations can survive being in that
atmosphere Sunday after Sunday Sunday after Sunday why
doesn't someone cry out for life cry out
for repentance cry out to go back to
square one and realize that our religion is
living death we need the life of God
as a brother said in the early history
of Ben Israel that I quote from time
to time it takes God to love God
it takes God to worship God it takes
God to serve God and it's said in
Revelation 2 and his servants shall serve him
not in the way and measure that we
have known till now but in unlimited measure
and serve him unlimitedly that when he says
that's what you speak and though it chafes
the hearers and you'd like yourself to change
the subject if God will not change it,
it remains it's not an issue of your
choosing my servants shall serve him well that's
going to take an extraordinary energy because the
demand of it is so great because death
contends against it death is offended by it
death wants to shut the mouth and wants
to go on without being troubled or threatened
or challenged by an evidence of a reality
that does not know and doesn't want to
know so we are the servants of life
and poor Adam whose death is having to
live before God without life from God, condemned
to live without life what do you mean
he doesn't have life?
biologically, but he doesn't have the life that
issues down from under he doesn't have the
waters of life, he doesn't have the freshness
of that life the creativity of that life
he's just a stalking death upon the face
of the earth though he's going to live
for hundreds of years in that condition which
is itself a judgment interesting that those who
celebrate life, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, die young and
die early, I can think of a few
others, but there was so much in their
30 or 40 years, like Oswald Chambers who
died before he was 40 I believe that
that what issued from them continues to bring
life to those who can avail themselves, their
life was so profound, not measured by their
longevity but by its character and its kind,
its intensity and its value that though they
are dead so called yet do they live,
while many who are living are yet dead,
the issue is the water of life and
I'm just taking a kind of a gamble
to say that we have the measure of
it within to the degree that we have
submitted to it without that we have as
much of the flow within that is creative
original and fresh as we are willing to
go in, up to our ankles up to
our knees, up to our thighs so
he talks about the predicament of Adam as
only a German theologian can the will to
live, the inability to live having to live,
that is a living death of the man
who is like God the life of Adam
is a continued, renewed rebellion against his existence
it is a dispute with life a reaching
out for the life that would bring this
life to an end that would be the
new life in all circumstances Adam wanted to
live to be sure, he is allowed to
live in the preserved world but he knows
that this life is a life on the
way to death and therefore death it's a
biological life it's an intelligent life but it's
a life without the life of God and
therefore it's on its way to death and
it is death and so he says it
creates an unquenchable thirst in the nature of
the case is a desperate unquenchable eternal thirst
that Adam feels for life that the more
passionately Adam asks for life the more deeply
he is entangled in death it is a
thirst for death so the word thirst conjures
up already the waters of life that Adam
could not access and that will be available
again in the millennial glory that we are
approaching and that is available to us even
now so what I wrote here what is
perhaps for us more tragic than being barred
Adam is tragic, he is condemned to death
even as he lives but what is for
us more tragic than being barred from the
way of the tree of life is to
have access to the tree and yet not
eat from it they have to have access
to the fountain of living waters and not
drink from it have access to the river
of life and never be willing to go
and to hazard going beyond our ankles that
is more tragic than Adam's fate and that's
the condition in which many of us languish,
we have access to the degree of our
proximity to the throne, to the absoluteness of
the sovereignty of God in everything and maybe
if we are not drinking from the waters
of life or being moved by the river
of life we need to question whether our
decisions and choices were predicated on the absoluteness
of God's sovereignty or our own disposition and
will I think it's normative of the intention
of God that God's people would overflow with
life and that there would be a freshness
and a creativity in all that we say
and that we do that no two services
could ever be the same that no conversation
is predictable, that even when we have just
but a few words of greeting there's something
even in that communication that is life-giving
because the flow of life is in us
and within us and in our deeps, out
from under and going out to bring life
so if the throne is the key examine
your proximity to the throne and be jealous
for life, be intolerant of the things that
are predictable and stale and look for and
expect the freshness that God says will be
expressed by fruit in its season, 12 months
of the year one different from the other,
can you imagine a church like that?
My God, what a grace for mankind to
have a presence of that kind in this
stale earth where people are dying for the
want of a fix for novelty and amusement
because everything is so dull and predictable, monotonous
that they need fantasy they need space trips
they need remarkable forms of, quote, entertainment because
of the boredom of death something to break
the boredom, however bizarre but once you've experienced
it then it loses its novelty then you're
on a quest for something yet more novel
yet more bizarre, yet more grim yet more
ugly, yet more vile, until we're by stage,
by stage, we're coming to the utterness of
Sodom and Gomorrah and the terrible depravity and
utter devastation of men morally and physically out
of a need to combat death by novelty
rather than to meet it by life so
where the lordship is actual to that degree
I think that the waters of life are
flowing and it waters the tree whose leaves
will not wither, nor their fruit fail every
month they will bear, because the water from
the sanctuary flows to them and their fruit
will serve for food real nourishment and their
leaves for healing so let me be the
man who measures out a thousand cubits more
to let you know it's available to the
depth that you're willing to submit ask yourself
quickly as I bring these remarks to a
close where am I my god in the
river of life how far in am I
in it at all or am I just
at the periphery and the beach, just like
liking the scintillating touch of the water from
time to time but having no desire to
enter and how am I functioning to serve
the lord is it out of human determination
and my own energy and ability, or is
it the same life that the service will
be more demanding in proportion to the depth
and because it's more demanding it requires yet
a greater measure of the life everything goes
together the quality of the service, and his
servants shall serve him, it says in revelation
22, to the uttermost by the enablement that
is given to the uttermost, the inexhaustible life
of god that flows it can flow to
us as a trickle it can flow to
us as a stream it can flow to
us as a rising river and it can
flow out to us as waters too deep
for us to cross where we have to
let go to that kind of thing that
gives us a sense of security where we
can always go back to the thing familiar
and trusted, the beach that god is not
speaking to us about these things only to
give us esoteric views of eschatological future, but
to finger our present and to say, how
far are you willing to go how deep
are you in for the world is in
desperate need of what will be wrought and
brought to it by those who are carried
by this river it fructifies everything it touches
even the dead sea becomes alive and teeming
with fish, how much more our congregations, how
much more our society, how much more ourselves
where we let the waters of life come
in there are salt marshes it says you
know what the clever commentators say, well the
lord has preserved that because of their chemical
value my own thought would be that these
are places that the river had not reached
maybe because a dam had been built up
or a crust where the salt marsh wants
to remain a salt marsh and doesn't want
to have its essential character changed it doesn't
want to be flooded by waters of life
that will purify it, it wants to remain
stagnant and outside and a little out of
the way and the purposes of god will
pass it by it will go on into
the sea and out into the nations while
those that choose to remain stagnant will become
permanently hardened and crystallized and encrusted as a
marsh in a salt waste that's frightening so
let's bow before the lord let's turn a
suggestive word into an event over the issue
of the throne and our proximity to it
an utterness toward god all the stops pulled
out for the water that is described in
revelation 22 is clear as crystal every last
taint and corruption of race, nationality ethnicity, culture
has been taken out, it is the pure
waters of life flowing out from under the
throne and out to the world for its
healing for its fruit for its blessedness and
his servants shall serve him and he will
be the light of it so lord, precious
god on high this much I know I
could not have turned to another theme this
morning if my very life depended on it
I sought for an alternative there was nothing
this and this only as fragmentary as it
was just really the text itself and trusting
that in an obedience of a man who
will serve him that the life of god
himself will take the word and make of
it an issue of life for those who
are languishing around the beach and around the
periphery and perhaps might even be in danger
of hardening into a salt marsh and never
being touched and purified by the waters that
issue out from under the throne and lord
we're not just speaking to these immediate saints
but through the tape of this out into
a denominational and religious world that has already
hardening into that marsh that is already living
a double death and has lived in it
so long it thinks it normative but has
not seen the freshness and the variableness of
god in the messages of their ministers you
know what the man is going to say,
you know that the three choruses precede the
message, you know that the offering follows, it's
stale it's stagnant, it's death and so lord
we plead for life and if that life
will not issue in and through the church
to a world what life will they know
they'll be knocking down the doors of the
theaters and the arcades and the electronic games
and every kind of device and anything to
break the deadness of predictable monotony for they
have not life come my god and show
them servants who serve you, who can only
serve you out of the power of your
life who are full and vibrant they're never
without the ability to pray, they're never without
an ability to give a real word their
very presence is life they palpitate and pulsate
with the life of god, they're in up
to the deeps so my god chasten us
for our desire for safety a minimal touch
without an abandonment and call out of even
this congregation to a deeper place those for
whom you're measuring a thousand cubits more, will
you receive that from the lord, will you
will you say, I choose I'm on the
shore, looking at these options, but I want
to go in a thousand cubits more, I
thought I was an exemplary saint dutiful and
sincere but I know now, hearing this, that
I want yet to have my feet in
a secure place I want the control my
knowledge those kinds of things I'm unwilling to
be swept off my feet, for who knows
where it will carry me I might be
speaking about the tent of Shem if I
can say god forbid or something else that
is the fruit in the season of the
god who chooses and who is very life
himself dear saints choose choose, how far will
you go in, and if you're really making
a choice, you'll not be embarrassed to stand
and make that choice and your standing is
a statement to god I'm standing for a
thousand cubits more I know I'm making myself
a candidate for fearsome things that I cannot
contemplate but I know, that I'll not myself
be able to mediate those things, or control
them for my security but I'm willing to
be borne up by you for wherever you
move wherever you flow is righteous because it
issues from the throne itself, from the sanctuary,
from the temple from the tent, from the
very heart and presence of god himself and
therefore, it's life healing, and fruit thank you
lord, take note of your saints and require
of them and remind them, didn't you stand
on that sunday morning, to that strange invitation
well, why now are you upset, why now
are you anxious and fearful, when you said,
I'm entering lord, I'm willing for the thousand
cubits more why then are you palpitating and
apprehensive and want to go back when I'm
going to bare you into places and uses,
that you have never ever contemplated which this
hour will require as I, in my great
wisdom, know from my own throne and sanctuary
lord, perform it, I pray for every soul
who has stood, and may they rejoice, may
they give you the praise, may those black
saints in Kansas City in the streets, encounter
something that they've never seen though they've heard
other, quote, gospel outreaches, just the face of
those who meet them, and the words that
they speak, unpredictable not cliched, not are you
saved brother, do you know Jesus, but a
fresh way, a way that the life of
God will quicken in that moment, that will
make a man to blink and to be
arrested, I've not heard this, there's something about
this that pierces me it's powerful, it's the
life of God may it come to your
Jewish kinsmen in New York lord through this
one, and others whom you'll raise up, and
in every nation my God, fruit and healing,
even now within the province that is within
us now, not having to wait for the
eschatological climax for the waters are available now
to as many as have proximity to your
throne, and will go in seal this standing
lord, and let it affect something very substantial,
that we might say with Paul, with greater
comprehension than ever we knew, for us to
live is Christ we haven't needed that before,
because we could perform the predictable and required
religious thing but now, now this uttermost thing
lord, requires the power and the enablement of
the risen and ascendant life, and we drink
it in, we take deep drafts even now,
suck it in lord, fill our void, fill
our being, let it go right into our
deeps my God, that out of our deeps
and from under, it can issue forth for
others as life if this is not a
possibility, that has been made available to us
through your suffering death, resurrection, and ascension, then
we of all people are mostly visited we're
condemned to live for God without God, we
are in Adam's plight but praise God for
the life that is available that flows continually
out from under the throne of heaven we
bless you lord give us deep drafts of
that living water and move us into its
deeps that many might receive the benefit of
that life, we thank you and give you
praise, God's people said, Amen