Though manhood seems to be a dry place, a salt and barren land, yet in the case of this Man it yields rivers of water,--numberless streams, abounding with refreshment.
I. Nature’s drought does not hinder Christ’s coming to men.
1. He came into the dry place of a fallen, ruined, rebellious world.
2. He comes to men personally, notwithstanding their being without strength, without righteousness, without desire, without life.
3. He flows within us in rivers of grace, though the old nature continues to be a dry and parched land.
4. He continues the inflowing of His grace till He perfects us, and this He does though decay of nature, failure, and fickleness prove us to be as a dry place.
III. Nature’s drought enhances the preciousness of Christ.
1. He is the more quickly discovered; as rivers would be in a desert.
2. He is the more highly valued; as water in a torrid climate.
3. He is the more largely used; as streams in a burning wilderness.
4. He is the more surely known to be the gift of God’s grace. How else came He to be in so dry a place? Those who are most devoid of merit are the more clear as to God’s grace.
5. He is the more gratefully extolled. Men sing of rivers which flow through dreary wastes.
III. Nature’s drought is most effectually removed by Christ. Rivers change the appearance and character of a dry place. By our Lord Jesus appearing in our manhood as Emmanuel, God with us,--
1. Our despair is cheered away.
2. Our sinfulness is purged.
3. Our nature is renewed.
4. Our barrenness is removed.
5. Our trials are overcome.
6. Our fallen condition is changed to glory.
IV. Our own sense of drought should lead us the more hopefully to apply to Christ. He is rivers of water in a dry place. The dry place is His sphere of action. Nature’s want is the platform for the display of grace.
1. This is implied in our Lord’s offices. A Saviour for sinners. A Priest who can have compassion on the ignorant, etc.
2. This is remembered in His great qualifications. Rivers, because the place is so dry. Full of grace and truth, because we are so sinful and false. Mighty to save, because we are so lost, etc.
3. This is manifested by the persons to whom He comes. Not many great or mighty are chosen. “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” He calls “the chief of sinners.” In every case the rivers of love flow into a dry place.
4. This is clear from the object which He aimed at, namely, the glory of God, and the making known of the riches of His grace. This can be best accomplished by working salvation where there is no apparent likelihood of it, or, in other words, causing rivers to water dry places. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The purifying and transforming power of the Gospel
What a mercy it is that the Gospel does go into the desert. Think of what this island used to be, when our sires wandered about in their nakedness among its oak groves. Think of the times when the great wicker image was set up, and the Druids surrounded it, and that image was crammed full of hundreds of men and women, who were all to be consumed in one dread fire, while the people stood by to see their fellow creatures offered to their national Meloch. That is all over now. No longer is the mistletoe cut with the golden sickle, or the fierce deity appeased with blood of men. The missionary came and preached the Gospel; and the Druids ceased out of the land. They were both the legislature and the hierarchy, but they could not stand before the Divine truth. They were everybody then, but they are nobody now. I do not know what may happen here yet,. But I do know this, that when the Gospel comes, the images, the idols, the filthy things, the cruel and horrible things must go. The river of life purified Britain once, and it will cleanse it yet again. “The waters shall be healed.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The waters shall be healed.
The modern Dead Sea, and the living waters
The remarkable vision, which lies open before us, is exceedingly reassuring to those who are troubled by reason of the dreadful condition of the times--and which of us is not? The prophet bids us think of those waters, drear and dreadful, known by the suggestive name of the Dead Sea! This was the “Chamber of Horrors” of the land of Canaan. The world is a veritable Dead Sea upon a gigantic scale. Such also is the city in which we live: must I call it “modern Sodom”? Every wave that breaks upon the shore of this human lake now seems to wash up remains of monstrous things, unearthly, inhuman, beastly, devilish. London is a simmering cauldron of vice and crime. O God! how long shall it be? In certain respects such is every man’s natural heart until he is renewed by grace. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, and may be well typified by the Sea of Death. If we could but look into it with such eyes as God hath, what should we not set? Thus the world, the city, the heart are each symbolised by the Dead Sea. Can they ever be purged? Can these waters be healed? According to our text, the Lord saith expressly, “the waters shall be healed.” Let us believe His promise, and take heart of hope from this good hour. Here is room, my brethren, for the faith which, like charity, “believeth all things, hopeth all things.”
I. And, first, to encourage your faith, I bid you to consider the promise.
1. We feel sure that this word of prophecy shall be accomplished to the letter in due time, because He that made the promise is able to fulfil it. What can resist the thunder of His word? Who shall stay His hand, or frustrate His design?
2. The Lord will fulfil this word thoroughly. This promise shall not be kept to the ear only, but it shall be fulfilled in the largest conceivable sense. What hosts have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb!
3. He will fulfil this word in connection with the present dispensation. To my mind this is clear enough, from the fact that these waters flowed forth from Mount Zion. From this I gather that our God means to use His church for His purposes of grace. “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined.” We believe that He means to win His ultimate triumphs by the preaching of the Gospel.
4. Note, carefully, that this Divine promise, “the waters shall be healed,” will not put aside instrumentality, but when it is fulfilled it will call forth more abundant agencies. The waters run into the Dead Sea, and purify its waters; then fish begin to multiply, and then man’s part comes in: “The fishers shall stand upon it from En-gedi even into En-eglaim.” You, slothful Christian men and women, who have never gone to sea in this fishery, will then be moved to the work, and will say, like Peter, I go a-fishing.
II. I invite you, next, to consider the wonder of the healing waters, that we may be helped thereby to believe that healing will come even to the Dead Sea of this present evil world, this present sinful Babylon, this present deceitful heart.
1. The wonders of the waters which Ezekiel saw lay in many things. First, consider whence they came. The healing waters flow from the throne of God and of the Lamb. As God is God, He hath decreed and purposed to redeem His people; and in that decree and purpose is the fountain of good to men. These waters flowed in the vision hard by the altar of burnt offering. Learn hence that the one channel of mercy to the sons of men is by the sacrifice of Christ. These waters, though they flowed unseen across the temple area, presently bubbled up from under the threshold of the door of the house. You know who is the Door of the temple of God: by Him we enter in unto God, and by Him God cometh forth in blessing unto us.
2. Note next, as a wonder in connection with these waters, how they increased. You and I have waded into these waters, have we not? If so, we know how they have increased upon us. Do you not see that the God who has done all this for you can do as much for others? Can He not heal the waters of the Dead Sea of our day?
3. Notice what these waters produced. They began to flow, and very soon vegetation came into the wilderness. They flowed into the desert, and into the Acacia Vale, as Joel calls it; and soon, on both sides of the river, there were trees, and, on a sudden, the trees were bearing fruit. Wherever the Gospel goes it carries life, and growth, and fruit with it.
4. As a further wonder, note whither the stream flowed. “These waters issue out toward the east country, and go down into the desert, and go into the sea: which, being brought forth into the sea, the waters shall be healed.” What a mercy it is that the Gospel does go into the desert! Think of what this island used to be, when our sires wandered about in their nakedness among its oak groves.
III. Consider the efficacy of the waters. I will quit the figure in some measure in order to explain how the Gospel is adapted to heal the wickedness of men. “What does the Gospel do?” saith one. I answer, In the Gospel we set before men the horrible nature of sin, and thus we lead them to turn from it. The Gospel gives man a hope; and that is a grand thing for the degraded and self-condemned. To have a hope that you can be a better man is a great help in escaping from sin. The Gospel purifies men because it gives them Christ Himself to be their Saviour. It brings them the Son of God to be their salvation. Moreover, the Gospel does not merely tell men certain truths, but it gives life, and power, and grace to them. There comes with the Gospel a power almighty, which changes the nature of the man; touches his understanding, and enlightens it; touches his will, and changes it; touches his affections, and purifies them. This power is the Holy Ghost, equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Son--nothing less than very God of very God. The power of the Gospel to cleanse this horrible Lake of Gomorrah lies in this: that it touches the heart, it moves the affections, it changes the nature, it renews the entire man. Moreover, it binds men in a holy brotherhood, and leads them back to their Father, and their God.
IV. The lesson of the waters. God works in very unexpected ways. The Lord knows how to do His own work, and He does it by apparently slender means.
2. As the Dead Sea has to be cleansed by that stream of water, all that we can do is, first of all, to pray, “Spring up, O Well!”
3. When we have done that, what next have we to do? Why, begin fishing. Go and fish in the streets, fish in the street corners, fish in any little room you can open, fish in the great crowds if they will come to you. The stream is breeding swarms of life; be ye fishers of men. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
