Ezekiel 47: 1-12
I love this passage of Scripture, not least because in Ezekiel’s time there was no river in the City of Jerusalem and so it would be impossible for a river to flow from the Temple.
You may well say to me, not so.
And I will concede that in 2011, while Jerusalem was in the process of getting a new railway line from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, geologists found large underground river.
But my point is that this underground river wasn’t known in Ezekiel’s day.
In fact, Jerusalem was well known for having water shortage issues.
Which is why King Hezekiah built an aqueduct from springs outside Jerusalem to pipe water into the city.
In Ezekiel’s time, the underground river in Jerusalem was unknown
So clearly this vision cannot have a literal meaning.
But I would suggest to you that it has a clear plain meaning.
It asks the question:
What is your commitment to the living God?
To answer that question, I want to consider
1. First what does the RIVER signify and then
2. And then what is the significance of the various Crossings
a) ankle deep
b) knee deep and waist deep and finally
c) too deep
But first I would like to consider that The RIVER represents
I believe that the RIVER symbolises the HOLY SPIRIT.
Let us look in a parallel passage in Revelation 22:1-5
22 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city.
On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.
And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
3 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.
4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.
5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light.
And they will reign for ever and ever.
Here we see the river again this time flowing from the throne of God the Father and from Jesus the Lamb.
And we can see the function of the River in both the passage from Ezekiel 47 and from the passage from Revelation is to bring life.
And for me Jesus in John 7:37-39 identifies the River as being the Holy Spirit.
This is what Jesus said:
Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.
"He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'"
But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
So having identified the River that emanates from the Temple in Ezekiel, let’s look at the levels of commitment that the vision of Ez 47 reveals that we can have
1. Firstly let us look at the first level of commitment, which is signified when the prophet walked across the river ankle deep.
Let me just read again in Ezekiel 47 v. 3
3 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.
When we first come to the Lord, often there is not a tremendous change in lifestyle.
Or we can have a euphoric commitment to Christ that grows cold
Story: When Maddy and I were running a refugee Church in Basle, we saw this happen again and again with many African brothers.
They would come to Basle as refugees in Switzerland and make a commitment to follow Christ .
At first when they had nothing, they would regularly come to Church. While they had no job, they were keen to come even to the Wednesday Bible Studies.
But once they got a job and they had some money, their interest for the things of the Lord waned.
But there were others who still came to Church when they had a job.
Why?
Because Church had become important to their spiritual growth.
And they never complained about my sermons being too long.
Yet I have been in churches in the UK where I have been asked only to preach for ONLY 10 minutes because I was told people have to get home so they can have their Sunday lunch by 12 noon.
And I wonder sometimes if the only time many in our churches only experience the Holy Spirit when the river laps over our feet on a Sunday morning.
2. The second level of commitment is signified by the prophet walking across the river knee deep and waist deep
Let me read again Ezekiel 47 v. 4
4 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.
This to me speaks of a little more commitment to follow the Lord.
Here the water does have an effect on our lives but does not actually turn the direction that our lives are going fully.
To use the analogy of Ezekiel 47, we struggle across the river but we do eventually go our own way instead of flowing with the river.
But we do start experiencing the coolness and healing of the River, yet we are not yet fully submitted to Christ because we are not yet flowing in the River.
But don’t be discouraged.
God is calling us to step out a thousand cubits further down the river.
3. And this nicely brings me to the final level of commitment where the prophet gets into the river and it is too deep for him to cross so he has to go with the flow as they say.
Let me read again Ezekiel 47 v. 5
5 He measured off another thousand, but now it was a river that I could not cross, because the water had risen and was deep enough to swim in—a river that no one could cross.
Story: One summer when we still had our holiday house in Austria (1992), I went down to the Klopeinersee Lake.
It was a baking hot day.
i) So, I first went in at ankle level.
That refreshed my feet, but the rest of my body was still baking hot.
ii) I then went further down the steps of jetty but the water was too cold.
So, I only went in up to my knee.
After a bit, it started to feel nice and relaxing but my back was still baking.
iii) So, I then gritted my teeth and went in but only up to my waist.
That is the critical level where the cold water starts to “bite".
And I then had two choices
The first was that I could have come back out of the Klopeinersee there and then, but my back would still be blazing hot.
The second choice would be to say "What do have to lose!" and dive straight in.
I took the second choice and suddenly I decided to plunge in.
Oh, what coolness I experienced across my burning back.
And after swimming in the water for a couple of minutes, I could not understand why it had taken me so long to get in
And so, it is with our Spiritual Lives.
Once we are flowing with the Lord, we wonder how we could have done without Him.
We need to pray and seek His Will in each and every situation we encounter.
But as we allow the Holy Spirit to guide our lives, we will start to face adversity.
I’d like to leave you with a story Jim Kane an American pastor told in one of his sermons on Sermoncentral.com.
It is an illustration called CARROT, EGG OR COFFEE.
One day a young woman went to see her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her.
She did not know how she was going to continue with it and wanted to give up.
She was tired of fighting and struggling.
It seemed as one problem was solved a new one arose.
Her mother took her to the kitchen.
She filled three pots up with water.
In the first pot of water, she placed carrots,
In the second pot of water, she placed eggs and
In the last pot of water she placed ground coffee beans
Then she placed them all on the cooker and allowed them to boil without saying a word.
After about twenty minutes later, she turned the cooker off.
She then fished the carrots out of the first pot and placed them in a bowl.
She took the eggs out of the second pot and placed them in a bowl.
And finally she ladled the coffee out of the third pot and placed it in a bowl.
Turning to her daughter, she asked, "Tell me what do you see?"
"Carrots, eggs, and coffee," the daughter replied.
The mother brought her daughter closer to the bowls and asked her to feel the carrots.
She did and noted that they had gone soft.
She then asked her daughter to take an egg and break it.
After pulling off the shell, the daughter observed the egg was hard-boiled.
Finally, the mother asked her daughter to sip the coffee.
The daughter smiled, as she tasted its rich aroma.
The daughter then asked. "What’s the point, Mum?"
Her mother explained that each of these objects, the carrots, the eggs and the coffee had faced the same adversity--boiling water--but each reacted differently.
The carrot went in strong, hard and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak.
The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior. But, after being subjected to boiling water, its inside became hardened.
The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they had been in the boiling water, they had changed the water.
"Which are you?" the mother asked her daughter.
"When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond?
Are you a carrot, an egg, or a ground coffee bean?"
