At The Scent Of Water

At The Scent of Water...

PPT 1 title

PPT 2 text with pic of dead tree stump

Job 14:7 "For there is hope for a tree, When it is cut down, that it will sprout again, And its shoots will not fail.

Job 14:8 "Though its roots grow old in the ground, And its stump dies in the dry soil,

Job 14:9 At the scent of water it will flourish And put forth sprigs like a plant.

This is a man named Job speaking, who went through some very painful things. 10 children killed, all his possessions gone, painful boils covering his entire body, that hurt so bad he was scraping himself with broken pottery. And yet he speaks of the evidence of hope as seen in nature around him. While, at this point in his spiritual journey Job does not yet speak of a resurrection of the dead, he still recognizes that something like it happens in nature. Before this book named after him ends he will boldly declare his faith in the resurrection of the dead.

He talks about trees that are very dead and yet come back to life. That is a word picture, and I believe it is a word picture that God has brought to the forefront of my mind and spirit this Lord's day, because of what some of you are experiencing and going through. Hang on, help is on the way!

PPT 3 pic tree stump coming back to life

This morning I am going to talk about things reviving at what our text calls the scent of water.

PPT 4 text with scent of water highlighted.

The scent of water is poetic language, because as we know water doesn't smell, and if it does it is probably contaminated with some nasty stuff and you don't want to drink it, or at the least you should use extreme caution. Researching this message I came across an unusual word, "petrichor." Does anyone know what that word means?

PPT 5 Petrichor defined

"A pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm dry weather.

Could anyone use some rain after a long period of spiritually dry weather? Anyone have a situation that as far as the eye can tell is beyond hope? Perhaps God has given me this message to share today as a means of bringing the scent of water to someone here, who desperately needs it.

As I said the text is poetic language and it describes life returning to something that has suffered dry rot and is for all practical purposes dead. And yet it says that with just a wisp of hope it will spring back to life. What I want to do in our time this morning is give a couple examples of that from scripture, and then explain a couple of difficulties with the text.

PPT 6 text

Ezekiel 37:1 The hand of the LORD was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones.

Ezekiel 37:2 And He caused me to pass among them round about, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley; and lo, they were very dry.

Ezekiel is one of the people who has been taken to Babylon as a captive because of God's judgment on the Jewish nation for serving false God's. But even in a place of judgment and punishment God gives his prophet a word of encouragement and a word of hope for the nation. Later in the chapter God will explain the meaning of the vision He has given Ezekiel.

PPT 7 text

Ezekiel 37:11 Then He said to me, "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.'

Ezekiel 37:12 "Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel.

So the picture before us is of a people whose hope had gone, and they are described as dead bones, but the prophet makes his own observation about them, "Lo they were very dry." Seasons of death had passed over these bones. The time where hope could still be had, had long passed. It reminds me of our text in Job 14:8 "Though its roots grow old in the ground, And its stump dies in the dry soil,

And yet God says to the dry bones that He was going to cause breath to enter into them, and they would live again. That kind of a word spoken in a dark and difficult time is like the scent of water to a person in a dessert dying of thirst.