Emblems of the Holy Spirit: Water
Water has three characteristics as an emblem of the Spirit — cleansing, fertilizing, and refreshing.
We read in Ezekiel xxxvi: 25-28:
“Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments and do them.”
Notice, a work of cleansing, a work of renewing, a work of empowering. In the fourth chapter of John we see how literally that was fulfilled:
“Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is saith unto thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water. Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”
He gave the woman of Samaria a draught of that water, and it took all the vileness from her; she was cleansed, and became a power from that very hour, [f He heard the prayer of that fallen Samaritan woman and gave her that water, will He not hear you if you desire above everything else the water of life? The Lord delights to hear and answar prayer. He gave that woman more than she expected. She came to get a pot cf water, and, thank God, she got a fountain of living water bubbling up in her life! Water rises up to its own level. This water came down from heaven and carried her back to the very presence of God, so that she became from that very hour transformed and changed.
I. WATER CLEANSES.
This work has been going on all these centuries. There is not a person whose heart may not be pure and white and clean if he will let this living water How into it. The Lord is just as ready to hear prayer as ever. 1 remember during the war, a soldier who cried out, “Oh, for a draught of water from my father’s well!” It was in the spring of the year, and the water was muddy. The dying soldiers were very thirsty, for the loss of hood in the hot weather brought on great thirst. That poor fellow, like David when he sighed for the water of Bethlehem, said. “Oh, for a draught of water from my father’s well!” 1 believe when that cry goes up from a thirsty .soul, God del ghts to give us the living water.
People ask, “How can I keep impure thoughts out of my mind’.’’” The Bible tells us (Eph. v: 26) that there is no way except to let this living water flow constantly through your mind. We are cleansed “with the washing of water by the Word.” Let clean water How through a pipe that is full of dirt, and it will soon clear the pipe and come out as pure and clean as when it passed into the pipe.
Keep in mind that the word of God will cleanse everj’- one of us if we will let it flow from Christ. I have yet to find a man or woman earnestly reading his Bible daily who became a backslider. It is men and women that neglect this living water, that get away from the living fountain and hew out broken cisterns that can hold no water, that are subjects for Satan to work in and through. “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy Word.”
Live according to the Word of God, and your life will become pure. It is chiefly by the Word that the Spirit of God deals with men. Christian people read Sunday newspapers, made up of all kinds of stufT that isn’t fit to go into a home on a week day; they crowd their minds with that, and the Word of God is neglected. “Thy word have I hid in my heart that 1 might not sin against Thee.” An old Scotchman says, “It is a good thing in a good place for a good purpose.” Many people have the Bible in their heads, or in their pockets; but we need to get it down into our hearts. The priests and the Levites had their religion in their heads, but the Samaritan had il in his heart, and he helped that poor wounded Jew. People pray, “Oh, God, make me pure,” and then they neglect the only thing in the world that will make them pure. It is impossible to have a pure life without the W’ord of God. Sin has driven God out of the hearts of people. What we want is the Spirit of God to come back and drive sin out. God will never use any man or woman who is not clean in heart. God wants purity of heart; and His Spirit will cleanse and purify every one who seeks Him above everything else.
2. WATER FERTILIZES.
There is no use in looking at water or thinking how delicious it would be if we had it; no well can satisfy thirst by looking at it. Turn to the seventh chapter of John:
“In the last day, that 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, out of his belly shall How rivers of living water. (But this spake He of the Spirit, which thcv that believe on Him should receive; for the Holy Ghost was not given, because that Jesus was qo yet glorified.)”
A good many people have life, but that is all; they haven’t this living water in abundance. They are satisfied with their present attainment, and the water doesn’t flow out. They are not fruit-bearing Christians at all; they have very little power. The poor Samaritan woman drank deeper than Nicodemus of the water of life. She turned her whole town upside down — no, right .side up. Nicodemus got a pitcher of Living water, but this woman got a whole well full. Hut in the seventh chapter of John’s Gospel, we have the highest type. If the church of God in America lived in this seventh chapter it would be revolutionized.
When 1 was a boy 1 used to carry water up the hill when the old well at mother’s used to get dry. When 1 went back there to live, 1 remembered how I used to have to lug the two pails of water, so i found a spring on the mountain side and laid pipes. Now I don’t have to carry water to my house; I sit there and let it run. The first few years in my Christian life I was all the time tugging and carrying water; but now I have a river that carries me. Christ came that we might have life more abundantly; and He wants to give us this living water, that it maT flow in upon us and through us. God isn’t stingy. He doesn’t want us to live, as we say, “at this poor dying rate.” Living rate is what we want! If this water is so free and abundant, you can have it, if jtou will.
Now I believe it is literally true that rivers can flow forth from us if we are only Spirit-filled. No man or woman is fit for God’s service until he has been filled. If I haven’t grace enough to keep my temper, the less I try to do for Christ the better. One of the saddest things in the world to-day is to see men and women that haven’t any testimony for Christ. A great many sisters cannot lead brothers to Christ because they haven’t grace enough to shine, not enough of the living water; it doesn’t How out. If people have to hunt up your Christianity, it doesn’t amount to much. I would give more for Elijah than those seven thousand people that never bowed the knee to Baal. What are seven thousand Christians good for if no one can find them except the Almighty?
We may be the outlet for rivers of living water, and you need not go back to the days of the apostles to prove it. We are apt to think that those were marvelous days, that Pentecost was a miracle never to be repeated. Pentecost was just a specimen day.
A few years ago a young man was living in a small town in England, and the Lord said to him:
“Charles, go up to London, and rivers of living water will flow from you.”
Up he went, and for forty years he preached in that great metropolis, and brought thousands to Christ. Every Wednesday sermons were printed and translated into different languages and sent all over the earth. He founded an almshouse for the poor. He was editor of The Sword and Trowel, I Ie had an orphan asylum for two hundred and fifty boys, and another for two hundred and fifty girls. 1 can’t begin to tell the streams that flowed forth from that man. He got the secret, as a young man, of being filled with the Spirit of God; and God let living waters flow through him.
The first time 1 went t<> California, I found as I passed through the beautiful Sacramento valley, that some of the ranches, as they call them, were perfectly green; everything seemed so luxuriant, and there seemed an abundance of everything; and just across the fence or line was another ranch where there wasn’t a single thing; everything was all dry.
I said t<> a gentleman in the car, “What does that
mean?”
1 le replied: “You must be a stranger in this part of the country. That farm that is so green is irrigated. They bring water down from the mountains, and it makes no difference how long we have a dry season, they have abundance of water.”
I have been in some churches and have met a member as dry as a dry brook, with no spiritual life or growth, while right alongside of him has been one who was all the time bringing forth fruit. What is the secret? One was under the fountain and the other was not.
When Isaiah preached, it was the darkest day that Israel had ever seen, but he could look forward and see a glorious day coming. “For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour My spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring”. There is a promise. Water is fertilizing. You can’t help but bring forth fruit when there is abundance of the Spirit. You can have all this water you want. It is abundant, and God wants to give it to us.
3. WATER REFRESHES.
In the seventh chapter of Revelation, the seventeenth verse, it says, “For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” Man and beast like to get near water. Nearly every large city in the world is built on the banks of some sea or ocean, lake or river; and the City of God is described as being on the banks of a beautiful river.
“And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, c ear 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 manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”
I have seen many beautiful rivers, but I am lookio8 Short Talks by D. L. Moody.
ing forward to that time when I shall see the river that bursts from the throne of God and flows through the midst of the Paradise of God.
Did you ever think that the last invitation that was ever sent down into this world from heaven was that we might come and take the water of life freely? The word “come” begins in Genesis and goes clear through to Revelation. Nineteen hundred times we have it in the Bible. The patriarchs took it up, the psalmist took it up, the apostles took it up, and the voice grows louder and louder until it comes into the last book of the Bible and the last chapter, and a’most the last verse. “The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him lake the water of life freely.” It seems as if, after the Lord had been in glory about sixty j’-ears, He saw some who said that they didn’t know that God wanted them to be saved. They may have been stumbling over something that Paul had said. And the Lord of Glory came down to earth, and the first man He met was John on the Isle of Patmos. And Christ said:
“John, I want you to write some messages to the church.”
What a day it must have been for John! He took up his pen and began to write, and he went on writing, writing, and writing.
“Now, John,” the Lord said, “put in one more invitation. Make it so broad that all the world shall feel that they are invited.”
And the last invitation sent down into th’s poor thirsty world is: “Let him that is athirst come.
And WHOSOEVER WILL, let him take the water oi life freely!”
Take it freely! May God help you to drink more of this water to-day than you have ever drunk in your past life.
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” I would rather be filled with the Spirit of God than have anything this world can give; and if that is your desire, your aim, God will not disappoint you.
How easy it is to work for God when we are filled with His Spirit! His service is so sweet, so delightful; He is not a hard master. People talk about their being overworked and breaking down. It is not so. It is overworry and care that wears people out. This nervous prostration that is overcoming so many men and women of. America is all because they haven’t this fullness of the Spirit that will just lift them above the turmoils and vexations of earth.
Now, if you want this fullness, remember that God commands us to be filled, and He won’t disappoint us. We cannot fill ourselves, nor can we fill another. May God help us to get our eyes higher than man. Go to the living fountain that flows on and on, and drink to-day until your thirst is quenched. If you want the Holy Spirit above everything else, then nothing else will satisfy you. What does a hungry man want? Bread. What does a thirsty man want? Water. Not fame, not honors, not society, not position. And the thirsty soul wants the living water to quench his thirst. He doesn’t want to drink from any stagnant pool, no Sh«»rt Talks by D. L. Moody.
but he wants this clear, life-giving, sparkling water. I believe God will give every one of us salvation, and then He will give us His spirit to work out this salvation.