Harry Foster
5. THE WORD AND THE SPIRIT
"Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit ..." John 7:37-39
IT was not given to Jeremiah to give any direct word concerning the Holy Spirit. It may surprise us to discover that the Third Person of the Trinity is never once mentioned in the whole book. A simple explanation of this may be that since the people would not accept the word of the cross there could be no promise of the Spirit for them. In the instructions concerning the anointing of Aaron and his sons, specific command was given that the oil must only be placed where first the blood had been, with the final order, "Upon the flesh of man shall it not be poured" (Exodus 30:32). In the passage quoted above, if we read on we would find John's comment that the promise of the Spirit could not be fulfilled until the Lord Jesus had been glorified in His death, resurrection and ascension. In fact Jeremiah's prophecy concerning the New Covenant could only be implemented by the Spirit who would write the law in men's hearts (Jeremiah 31:33) but this is not actually stated. Jeremiah was certainly a man of the Spirit, anointed for his task as is implied by the assurance, "I am with thee, saith the Lord" (1:19). Nevertheless it is a remarkable fact that nowhere in all the book is the Holy Spirit mentioned.
The reply, then, as to whether there is any word from the Lord in this connection, must come from the lips of the Lord Jesus Himself, and John records that on the last great day of the Feast of Tabernacles the Lord made a public announcement that there is such a word -- The Word about the Spirit.
But in doing this, Jesus referred us back to the Old Testament -- "as the scripture hath said". The Bible student may search the Old Testament for this particular Scripture, but he will search in vain. Well, the actual verse may be hard to find, but it is typical of the Lord Jesus and His dealings with us, that He makes us see things in the Bible which we did not know were there. The promise had been given all the time, but it needed Christ [86/87] to make the truth explicit to us. It is also typical of spiritual interpretations that they bring into prominence not just isolated statements but basic principles embodied in the Word of God. In this case the actual verse may be hard to find, but there are not lacking indications of the spiritual truth expressed by the Lord Jesus on that occasion.
Surely what the Lord Jesus meant was that it is one of the great messages of the Word of God that whenever a man is in vital touch with heaven, rivers of life flow out from him. All the Scriptures agree that this is so. A few outstanding examples will perhaps make the matter clearer. Think of Joseph. He was in touch with heaven, even in the pit and the dungeon, and he became a remarkable minister of life on a grand scale. Think of Isaiah, the man who saw the Lord high and lifted up. What streams of life have flowed and are still flowing from his prophetic work. Today, more than ever, Isaiah's words bring refreshment and reviving to parched and stricken hearts all over the world. It would be easy to multiply such instances from the Old Testament; may they all pale beside the glorious example of Christ Himself.
He was the great embodiment of this truth. He implied that the principle could be verified in His own case, when He prefaced His words with the invitation, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink" (John 7:37). The Scriptures had said that it would be so, and He was able to demonstrate the reality of which they spoke. The Lord Jesus was in touch with the Father in heaven, and so the rivers flowed. The occasion was the Feast of Tabernacles, the joyful celebration of heavenly fullness, and it was on the last day, when special emphasis was being given to the pouring out of the water from a golden pitcher at the Temple altar, that the Lord "stood and cried". Alas, there were no life streams pouring from that temple. The festival had become dead and powerless, an empty mockery of the spiritual truths which it was meant to represent.
One of the striking features of John's Gospel is the way in which he contrasts the various Jewish festival and religious occasions with the reality of the Son of God. The thirsty man could find no inner satisfaction from the Temple with its empty ritual, so the Lord Jesus drew attention to Himself as the true fulfilment of God's Word. Thirsty men would find their deepest needs met if only they turned to Him, and the outcome would be that they themselves would become channels of blessing.
The next chapter (John 8) demonstrates this truth in action. The woman was sinful but she was a very needy and thirsty soul. She was dragged to the Lord unwillingly and made an object of shame, but in the end it proved that in Christ she had found the source of living water. Out of the heart of the Saviour there flowed a satisfying river of life. When every man had gone to his own house, the Lord Jesus had been alone with the Father on the mount of Olives (John 7:53), so His touch with heaven made Him a fountain of refreshing waters to a parched and sin-sick soul.
The Lord announced that after His ascension, this same truth would function in the believer. We are all to be sources of life to others. The Lord is now exalted in heaven; by maintaining vital contact with Him we can not only find our own thirst quenched but become those through whom the rivers of living water may flow out to others.
"Is there any word from the Lord?" So far as the Holy Spirit is concerned, Jeremiah had nothing to say but his colleague and contemporary, Ezekiel, had very much to say about the Spirit and indeed it may well be that the Lord Jesus was referring more directly to Ezekiel's prophecies than to other parts of the Old Testament, for Ezekiel received a remarkable revelation based on the life-giving powers of God's river.
Ezekiel was a man of visions. He saw many heavenly wonders. Perhaps one of the most remarkable was the vision described in Chapter 47. He had already described in detail his visions of a new Temple as we can read in Chapter 40 and onwards. He then went on to relate, "He brought me back unto the door of the house; and behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward ... on the south of the altar" (47:1).
The waters "trickled out" (47:2 m.) and then proceeded to flow down in a miraculous way, not being fed by any tributaries and yet rapidly deepening at every thousand cubits. What a river! It was so amazing that the prophet could hardly [87/88] believe his own eyes. No wonder the angel asked him, "Hast thou seen this?" (v.6). In his youth Ezekiel had lived in Judea, and presumably knew well the region which he was now called upon to describe. The road from Jerusalem down to the Dead Sea was harsh and barren in all conscience, but now it was presented to him as the scene of freshness and fertility. From the heart of the House of God there was such a flow of life-giving water that the whole landscape was transformed in a way which reminds the Bible student of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:10).
He was led along its banks as in a dream, measuring the depth first by his ankles, then by his knees, then by his loins, until "it was a river that I could not pass through; for the waters were risen, waters to swim in ..." (v.5). Was this the Scripture to which the Lord Jesus referred: "... out of his inner being shall flow rivers of living water"?
The prophet goes on to describe how he was led to a further contemplation of this miracle river in order to note the signs of freshness and fertility which everywhere abounded as this great and holy stream rushed down from the House of God. The language seems to suggest something of Ezekiel's amazement at it all. The abundant life on the banks of the river! The teeming life in the waters! The trees with their ever-fresh foliage and their luscious fruit. The men, spreading their nets in a fisherman's paradise! The whole atmosphere seemed to throb with a sense of triumphant life. Death was being swallowed up, the very waters were being healed (v.8) and the explanation, so simple and yet so profound, was that "the waters thereof issue out of the sanctuary" (v.12).
Was the Temple which Ezekiel saw only a vision? I believe that it may well have been. In that case, was this river only a visionary one? Well, if it was, it remains the vision of a great spiritual reality. Where there is the throne of God and the altar of the cross of Christ, then the way is opened for God's river, which is full of water, to flow out to the dying and thirsty world around.
What may have surprised Ezekiel most of all was to be shown the objective of this divine river. The luxuriance and the fruit-bearing, all the signs of abundant life were, in a sense, only incidental. They show just what happened on the way. On the way to what? Why to the Dead Sea, that concentrated essence of death which defied, and still does defy, every attempt to sweeten it. "Into the sea shall the waters go which were made to issue forth; and the waters shall be healed" (v.8). It was as though this river was set on coming to grips with all that death and to swallow it up in an overwhelming tide of life.
This is something which no human energy can accomplish. The best that the modem Israelis can do is to extract some of the salts. It would be a long and impossible process, to cure the Dead Sea by taking out its death. God's method is quicker and much more effective: He pours in life. We are given a picture of prevailing death being drowned in a torrent of life from the Throne. What a river!
We need not only to be visionary but to be practical. Most of us may have a Dead Sea situation which seems to defy all our efforts to deal with it. We may have worked long and hard to extract the death element in our life or in our church; we may have prayed much that the Lord would remove it; but the process seems long and hopeless. The Lord's answer is a positive one -- the bringing in of His own triumphant life. He who believes on the Lord Jesus, even though he be surrounded by a Dead Sea, can know the spiritual reality of having rivers of living water flowing from his inner man. The Scripture says so. Jesus confirmed it. There is enough life in the heavenly Christ to swallow up all that death element.
The Lord Jesus laid down a basic condition: "If any man thirst, let him come unto me". This may come to a sinner as the first invitation to find salvation in Christ, but the Lord Jesus made more of it than that. He said that such a man, if he finds and maintains vital contact with the Saviour, will become a source of overflowing life to others. He said that a church -- any church -- can be such a place of the altar and the throne that the life of the Spirit may flow out in saving blessing to the dead circumstances all around. "He said unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen this?" (v.6). You ask if there is any word from the Lord. Well, perhaps this is it. Those who are where the Lord wants them to be and under His full government, can lay claim to the promise that from their midst there may gush rivers of living water.
This series has been concerned with the life and times of Jeremiah, so it is only right that [88/89] we should try to see how this principle fits him. As I have said, the Holy Spirit is not actually mentioned in his prophecies, but he was truly a man through whom the river flowed. The Lord's promise is by no means limited only to preachers but the offer is to "any man". His adversaries could silence Jeremiah's preaching, but they could never stem the flow of God's river through him. The superficial reader may question if this were so. We therefore need to look again at Ezekiel's vision.
At the actual place from which the water proceeded there was a very small flow indeed, a mere trickle (Ezekiel 47:2). What mattered, however, was not the immediate and obvious amount of water which came from under the threshold of the house, but the eventual flood in its full development. We must not judge by the immediate: we may well not be aware of what is happening in our own case. No doubt it could be said that there was not any sensational sign of the flowing river from this man of God, but we should ask Baruch, his friend and helper, if life was not ministered to him through Jeremiah. We might ask even Zedekiah, the king who was afraid to obey the prophet's injunctions, and he would admit that in Jeremiah he recognised a man who was in touch with God. Even in his rejection and suffering, he was a believer from whom flowed God's river.
The spiritual power may not have seemed much at the beginning but, just like Ezekiel's river, it increased in depth and power as it went on. Take Ezekiel himself. Is it not reasonable to suppose that humanly speaking he owed much to Jeremiah? We know that while the younger man was with the captives in Babylon, Jeremiah sent letters to God's faithful people there, encouraging them to stand true to the Lord. We must take the two men together. It would be wrong to contrast them, considering Jeremiah as the man of judgment, with a dismal and depressing ministry and thinking of Ezekiel as the cheerful messenger of hope. No, they worked together, even though they lived so far apart. In point of fact the bright and positive period of Ezekiel's ministry only commenced after news had been received of the fall of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 33:21-22). When judgment had fallen, then the Lord could reveal hope of the Spirit's working.
Then we must consider Daniel and his friends, who were also in Babylon. Through all the long years of captivity, in spite of the Dead Sea of worldliness, human glory and powerless religion all around them, these men were kept in abundant spiritual vitality. The river flowed through them. Spiritually it was the same river which emerged from Jeremiah's ministry, and it certainly had the same end in view.
The captivity was over. Amid scenes of enthusiastic rejoicing, the remnant prepared to return to the land. The river of life was flowing on, deepening now and growing wider and fuller. God was turning the captivity as the streams in the South. The mountains broke forth into singing, the trees of the field clapped their hands, the thorns turned into fir trees and the briars were changed into myrtles. What a majestic movement of life flowed on through those desert regions, bringing hope of recovery to the desolated land. And it all happened "that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished" (Ezra 1:1). This, then, was the same river which had seemed to trickle so pathetically from Jeremiah which had now broadened out into a mighty stream.
And the river flows ever on. The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews was at an advanced point; for him there was a river to swim in. When he sat down to communicate to the believers of his day (and ours) the wonder and glory of the New Covenant, he had to rely on Jeremiah's prophecies to convey his message. So Jeremiah's river had not dried up! Not at all. The whole Church has been enriched by his ministry. His secret is that he was a thirsty man who went to the fountain of living waters for his own soul's needs and found that the rivers went flowing out, even as the Lord Jesus said they would. The secret remains the same -- "because the waters thereof issue out of the sanctuary".
This brings us to the great difference between the rivers that flowed from Eden and this river of Ezekiel's. The narrative of Genesis 2 describes the time before sin had entered in, the time when the garden was the place of unclouded fellowship between God and man. From such a garden of communion, blessing could flow freely out to the four corners of the earth. Ezekiel's ministry, however, was concerned with a people whose fellowship with God had been marred by disobedience and sin, so that the place of communion was not simply a garden but a temple with an altar. Ezekiel tells us in his vision that the [89/90] waters flowed from beside the altar (Ezekiel 47:1) which just means that in spiritual experience, the Holy Spirit is closely associated with the cross of Christ.
A study of Ezekiel's altar will reveal that its dimensions were very great and its position most significant. It stood at the very entrance to the house and must not be by-passed. "When the people of the land shall come before the Lord in the appointed feasts, he that entereth by the way of the north gate to worship shall go forth by the way of the south gate; and he that entereth by the south gate shall go forth by the way of the north gate: he shall not return by the gate whereby he came in, but shall go straight before him " (Ezekiel 46:9). There must be no turning back at the altar, no avoiding of its challenge and cost. If only the cross of Christ is allowed to do its full work of ruling out all self-righteousness and all self-sufficiency, then the promise is sure that the rivers of living fullness will flow out.
Is there any word from the Lord about the Spirit's fullness? Indeed, there is and it may well be that Christ's promise to the thirsty believer was based on this vision of Ezekiel. It was certainly based on the Scriptures. It is surely a timely message. It is still needed. And it is still gloriously true.
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