The Water - Ezekiel 47

Have you ever had a moment in life where you felt… stopped up? Like, clogged up? If life is a river with water moving in and around you, through you - have you ever felt like there was a log jam in life? And I don’t mean physically - like a clogged artery or something, but spiritually, emotionally - have you ever just felt, stuck? Hang on to that question while I paint you a picture. 

When I was in seminary I had an opportunity to travel to Israel. It was an amazing trip, and one of the highlights of the trip was that we got to stop by the Dead Sea. Now, if you’re not familiar - the Dead is famous because the water is insanely salty. Apparently the salinity level is something like 35%, compared to the ocean, which is like 4% salty, and if you’ve ever tasted ocean water - 4% is plenty. Gross. Now the salty water of the dead sea has two big effects - First, it kills everything. Hardly any life can survive in the dead sea, the water is just too toxic and the second effect is that it’s super fun to float in the dead sea. The salt level is so crazy high that when you float in the water, you just sort of bob along right at the top of the water. It’s a lot of fun, my seminary buds and I got to actually get into the water - it was a great day. Now, if you compare that to the sea of Galilee - I think we’ve got a picture of the two]. So the Sea of Galilee is the little guy up top, and then there’s a little squiggle (that’s the Jordan river, where Jesus was baptized that we talked about last week), and then the Dead Sea is below that. But the Sea of Galilee - just a little squiggle bit north, that sea is THRIVING with life. They’ve got fishing and tourism - we went to restaurants on the sea of galilee, it’s a super cute little place. They’re in the same region, they’re actually connected by the Jordan river - so why is the dead sea, dead?

It’s not a trick question, the answer is really easy. The Sea of Galilee has outflows. Water comes into the sea, and water passes out of the sea - and in between you get vibrant life. The Dead Sea, does not. I think it’s technically the lowest point on the surface of the earth. Something like 400 meters below sea level, and it’s got these mountains all around it. Water and minerals and salt comes in - but it never gets out! The water will evaporate, but there’s no outflow. So the minerals and salt and all that stuff stays behind in the Dead Sea. The difference between vibrant life and toxic death is that one has intakes and outflows, and the other bottles everything up. Actually, it kind of works that way with people too, doesn’t it? If your life has intakes and outflows, you can live a vibrant thriving life. But if you don’t have an outflow, if you just take in things and bottle them up, you’re going to get a little salty.

Now, if you weren't with us last week - you might not know that we have started a brand new series called “Not Like Us” where we have been looking at the person of God that we call the Holy Spirit. Who is the Holy Spirit? What does He do? How does He work in our lives? And what we have found is that there are a couple of really helpful images used in God’s word to describe the Holy Spirit - to help us know him better. Last week we talked about the Dove, and we looked at Jesus’ baptism and that moment when the Holy Spirit showed up in his life, and how that same Spirit comes into our lives. Now today, I’ve got some amazing things I want to show you. We’re going to start with the book of Ezekiel - and that’s a powerful part of the bible, but then what we’re going to see is that this picture Ezekiel is going to give us - a picture of a river flowing from the throne - it comes up again and again in Jesus’ time, and even in the passage we heard earlier as a description of heaven! The Holy Spirit is often described as working through water, and what we are going to see is that God wants to pour that Holy Spirit into us - and if we can get that, it will transform not only our personal lives, but it will overflow from our lives into the lives of the people around us. 

So let’s dive in - if you want to follow along in your bible, I’m going to be in Ezekiel chapter 47. You can look that up in your bible, or grab a bible off the back wall, or - of course - looking it up on your handy bible app works great too. Ezekiel is in the old testament, and while you’re looking that up - let me set the stage a little bit. Ezekiel was this guy who lived in a time when everything was falling apart for Israel. Now if you know the story of the people of Israel you might be thinking to yourself, “JJ that doesn’t really narrow it down very much - Israel was always in trouble.” And you’re right - but this was sort of the big one. Ezekiel’s job was to tell the King when he was doing things wrong, and the King pretty much always ignored what Ezekiel had to say. God would give Ezekiel a vision or a command or something to say, and then Ezekiel would faithfully give that warning, only to watch the king ignore it and bad things happen. This is the life of an Old Testament prophet. But Ezekiel is one of the prophets who actually had an “I told you so moment.” Because all the bad stuff that Ezekiel was warning about? It comes true - Ezekiel lived during the time when Jerusalem falls to the Babylonians, and then he gets deported to the capital city. Imagine thousands of captive Israelites, marching in a line, with ropes around their neck, force marched for hundreds of miles to a capital city of their enemies where they get to be servants for the rest of their lives. But here’s what’s amazing about Ezekiel, and really all the prophets. Ezekiel could have absolutely gotten up on his high horse and condemned them and sneered, “I told you so. I told you so. I told you so.” 

Do you have moments like that in your life? People who you have warned, and you warned them SO MANY times - and then they’re bad decisions come back to bite them in the tushy and the temptation is SO strong. You want to say it so bad. I told you so. [grid here]. But he doesn’t. When the warnings go ignored, and the bad thing that he knew would happen, happens - Ezekiel shifted his message. Bad things are going to happen - ope, okay, now the bad thing has happened, and then the prophets shift to a moment of hope. They never kick Israel when they are down. When the people are beat up by the world, that’s when the prophets start talking about restoration. They start talking about return and freedom and hope. And that’s where we get Ezekiel talking in chapter 47. They are in exile, they’ve already done their own version of the trail of tears - forced to march to a far away land, and in that sadness, into that despair and hopelessness, Ezekiel speaks these words. 

[read v.1-2]. Now I’ll be honest, when I first read that - it didn’t mean anything to me. A guy showing Ezekiel water flowing from the temple out the gate. But if we dive into their world just a little bit, we might learn that to the people who Ezekiel was talking to - the fact that the water was flowing EAST means something to them. You see, to the people of Israel, they have this story of Adam and Eve, maybe you’ve heard of those guys. They were in the garden of Eden, and they got in trouble, so they got kicked out of paradise. And when Adam and Eve left the garden of Eden, they left going East. So what they heard was not just an interesting factoid about the direction of the water. Water flowing east to these people represents leaving the Garden of Eden. It means losing paradise. It means death and loss and sadness. These are people who were just force marched from Jerusalem to Babylon - anybody want to guess which way is Babylon? Let’s put the map on the screen [show it]. They marched north in a big arch, but the city of Babylon is almost directly east of their home. 

And so Ezekiel is having this vision, and he’s watching this trickle of water flowing out of the temple east. And to them, this direction probably feels cursed. This is the way that leads to death. This is the way that leads to chaos. But as Ezekiel goes, the water gets deeper and deeper. First it’s up to his ankles, Verse 4 it’s up to his knees, and then his waist and then it gets so deep, he has to swim. This is probably the first major thing I want you to catch. Ezekiel doesn’t even know where the water is going yet, but he is invited to go deeper and deeper. It’s the same way with God in our lives. The presence of the Holy Spirit working in your life might start as a trickle, but if you follow along the way of Jesus - you’ll find the water getting deeper and deeper. There is an invitation from God to follow him deeper into life giving waters. And then in verse 6 it says, [read v.6] have you been watching? As they have been following the water, something has been happening - and this guy asks Ezekiel, “did you even see it?” Verse 7, [read v.7]. He is surprised by this water that’s flowing out of the temple, it’s going in the bad direction, but then there is life. Trees on both sides of the river, huh - that’s odd. [read v.8a]. Shoot. This water flows into the valley of the Dead Sea. We know how the Dead Sea works - that’s where water goes to die. The Dead Sea is Dead. It’s been called that for thousands of years. This river flows into the valley of the Dead Sea, but wait - read the rest of the sentence. [read v.8b-10]. This water, that started out as a trickle running down the steps of the temple, grew from a trickle and gets deeper and deeper as he goes, as he followed the current east. The direction that normally represents human chaos and sin and death - it’s flowing right into the dead sea, but this water brings life. This water brings a promise into the dead things of our world - new life is possible. Do you have places in your life, where life giving water goes to die? Maybe there’s a relationship - a friendship, a family member - a niece or nephew, a grandkid or spouse - and it feels like you’re pouring so much into it and receiving nothing back. To all of us - the water brings a promise: new life is possible. Maybe it’s financial - a vehicle or a house or a job - and it feels like you’re pouring your wallet into a black hole, and there’s no change. Or maybe it’s in the mirror. You’re trying to lose some weight, or you’re battling depression and anxiety - and you’re pouring so much into it, so much effort and sometimes it feels like the needle is not even moving. Can we hear the promise of Ezekiel’s river - new life is possible. What places in your life does water flow to die? Or here’s one more - maybe it’s something in your past. Maybe someone hurt you, or hurt someone you love - and there’s trauma and anger - and you never gave forgiveness, you never found closure or release or resolution - and it feels like everything you do on this side of yesterday to work on it and try to make things better - it’s all just flowing into the dead sea. There’s no outflow, only death going that way. Can we let God’s promise break into our past, and truly grasp the truth that new life is possible. 

Now the vision of Ezekiel is powerful, but one of the greatest things about scripture is that some of the pages are separated by hundreds of years - maybe even thousands of years, and yet - God is telling the same story. We fast forward to the time of Jesus. The people of Israel are back in Jerusalem,  Babylon is over and gone - but now the Romans are in charge of things. And ever since the days of Ezekiel, there is a tradition that they created in the temple - a festival where they reenact the vision of Ezekiel 47. It was called the Feast of Booths or the Feast of Tabernacles. And just imagine this with me - a giant festival where people sleep in tents all over the city of Jerusalem. And they gather every day for really upbeat worship at the temple. This is like the Creation Festival or Unity Fest of the ancient world. For seven days they would camp out and worship and celebrate God. And on the seventh and final day of the festival, crowds would gather at the temple steps for the culminating ritual. Imagine this - pushing through the crowd so you could get up close enough to see the big finale. Priests would carry these large cisterns of water from a nearby spring, and they would carry all this water up to the temple, and while the crowd sang the psalms, the priests would pour water from the altar down the temple steps, creating a stream flowing out from the temple toward the east. It was a living reenactment of Ezekiel’s vision, an embodied way for a whole nation to pray together and ask God to bring the promised river of living water. And that’s the setting, that’s the moment when Jesus says these words. You don’t have to flip to it, but let’s put John chapter 7 on the screen. [read v.37-39a]. Jesus transformed a tradition into an invitation. Jesus says, “this isn’t just a reenactment of a promise, I am the promise.” If you are thirsty, come.

That invitation, ‘Are you thirsty? Come to me and drink. I am the living river. That thing that you are waiting for on the steps of the temple, you can find it in me.” That invitation is for you. The Holy Spirit, Jesus’ Spirit that lives in every Christian who believes in him - brings healing like water to the desert. In your life, are you thirsty? Do you long for healing to come and wash over all your brokenness? What I want you to see with all of this is that everything the river exemplified in Ezekiel’s vision, Jesus became that in the world. He left paradise, the temple, to come after us - who had wandered east. He called his disciples, “fishers of men,” just like the fishermen on the banks in Ezekiel’s vision. He fed the hungry and he healed the sick, like the trees that lined the riverbanks. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus poured life into a place of death. And those who came to him, who took him up on that invitation, the promise came alive in them too. 

Let me see if I can explain it like this. So I have these three cups here, if you can’t see I’ve got a cup labeled “Holy Spirit” and a Dirty cup filled with dark water labelled “Sin” and then this little cup is me and you. Now, the cup labeled YOU starts off so clear and beautiful. Nice and clean just like we’re meant to be. We are created by God for goodness, in fact - it looks just like the water that’s in the Holy Spirit cup. The problem is when we bring sin into our lives, [pour the sin cup into the YOU cup]. It changes us. It changes who we are, and there are elements in our lives that are not supposed to be there. Pieces that make us dirty and a mess. Maybe there’s an addiction or a habit, maybe we lied to a loved one, maybe we hurt someone, or hurt ourselves - the point is that we are not what we were meant to be. Sin has made us cloudy.  And God sees this, and this is not how he wants us to be. He says, “this is not how I intended you to be.” And so God sends Jesus - he is our rescue plan. He came and lived a perfect life, no sin in this life. And so the question is, what would happen if we let the healing presence of Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, come in contact with the sin that’s in our life? When sin comes into our lives, sin makes us unclean - it dirties our water and ruins everything. Like the water that flows into the dead sea every single day - it only makes the dead sea more dead. But in Ezekiel’s vision, the water that flows into the dead sea will make the salty waters fresh and pure. And just like that, when we put Jesus into our lives - he will make us fresh and pure. [pour the Jesus cup into the You cup]. If you can’t see it very well - the YOU cup is nice and clean again! The sin is totally washed away. And not just in your life! This river of water that starts out like a trickle in the temple, it gains depth as it flows. This water gets deeper and deeper, it doesn’t just swallow up YOUR sin, Jesus is going to swallow up ALL sin [pour the sin cup into the Jesus cup]. When sin gets into your life, it mucks everything up. For those who are just listening, or if you can’t really see it on the livestream - I just poured the entire sin cup in the Jesus cup, and the Jesus cup is still CLEAN. The healing power of the Holy Spirit, that flows like a river from the temple of God’s presence into the desert of your life - nothing can mess that up. It brings healing, it flows and overflows into every area of your life. 

So I want to send you out with two challenges this morning, two questions that I want you to ponder. First - Where do you need to be healed? The challenge in our moments of healing is to let God pour into you. Let the healing waters of his love wash over every wound you have in this life.The second question I want you to spend some time with this week is Where can you PROVIDE healing? Obviously we are not Jesus, but once Jesus has poured healing into our lives, we can pour into the people around us. This is basic Christian teaching - we love God, and then we love our neighbors. Here at Center a lot of time we use the imagery of ripples in a pond - Christ, Community and Co-Mission. The love of God, which comes through the actions of Jesus, and exists in our life by the power of the Holy Spirit - pours into us, and then overflows into the people around us. Now I want to put a flag on that challenge. We bring healing to other people AFTER we ourselves have been healed by God. A really famous phrase we use is “do ministry from your scars, not your wounds.” We know the difference - right? Scars are wounds, but they have had time to heal. Wounds are still open. If you minister while you are still wounded, you will just end up bleeding all over everybody. But if you let God’s healing do it’s important work in your heart first, THEN you are ready to overflow into the people around you.

Let me give you an example of this - I want to tell you the story of my friend Bobby. Bobby was the sweet old man I think I have ever met. He was in his mid-80’s, and Bobby was an alcoholic. I’m not sure what all his medical conditions were, but I know it was challenging for him to get around. He lived real close to the church and he would walk everyday across the parking lot. He didn’t need a cane, but he took itty bitty steps, took him roughly 36 hours to get across the parking lot. Now our Church didn’t have an AA program, but the presbyterians up the road did. And everyday Bobby would walk up the hill to the presbyterian church to go to his meeting. And when I started at this particular church he came into my office and said, “I’m an alcoholic, but I’ve been sober for over 40 years.” God healed me from this, and this is my ministry. If you ever hear of anyone who is struggling, you give them my number. I said okay. A year went by and I started to get to know the people of that church. One of the guitarist in the band was in recovery - he was in his forties, maybe early fifties - “Oh yeah, Bobby helped me through it, I’ve been sober ten years.” No kidding, wow, that’s great. There was a guy who sang in the choir in the traditional service. Big farmer guy, raised a bunch of chickens - alcohol was reeking havoc in his life, especially on his health. He started going to the meetings after I introduced him to Bobby. This was his reputation, he was known as the man who had been healed, and provided healing to the people around him. And then Matt started coming to our church. Matt was a family man, good job, wife and two boys. But he had a very dark secret - some really serious addictions to some really heavy drugs. And he came to me and said, “I feel like a fraud. I feel like I’m not allowed to sit in your church - because of some of the things I’ve done.” Now Matt and his Wife (these are not their real names, we understand?) but Matt and his wife always sat in the same seat - this is one of those things you only notice when you’re on the stage a lot. If you go to church a couple times in a row - lot of folk have favorite seats. And we were in my office talking and I said, “let’s go into the worship space for a minute.’ And I brought him up on the stage - room was empty, and we looked out over the seats. I told him. “You sit there.” And I wasn’t going to use names, or share anybody’s private business, but I told him very generally. There’s a guy who sits behind you who started recovery just last year. There’s another dude who sits over there, ten years sober - but before that, has a pretty dark story too. And I pointed to all the spaces where the broken people of our church sit (which took a while) and then I said -  and there’s a little old man who sits in the choir loft named Bobby, that was the only name I used, and he’d love to connect with you - here’s his number. 

Where do you need to be healed? And once the Holy Spirit’s healing presence has come into your life - where can you provide healing? And I want to send you out with this last thought - Scars are credentials, not disqualifiers. If you’re sitting in here today and you think back over your past and you figure, “I needed so much healing from Jesus - there’s no way I can help other people.” You’ve got it backwards. Scars are credentials, not disqualifiers. I had to get up here this morning and tell you Bobby’s story, because I don’t have one of those stories in my life. I wanted to get up here and tell you one of my stories - but I don’t have any! I can love people and walk alongside people, it’s a privilege and an honor to do that, but I need - no, the church needs people like Bobby - because I have never struggled with addiction to alcohol. The more God has redeemed and restored in your life - the more equipped you are to let healing overflow from your life. Scars are credentials, not disqualifiers. If you look at your emotional scars and think they make you ugly, unworthy or broken - remember that we worship a risen savior who has beautiful, heart-breaking scars. And in his hands, those scars bring healing to the nations. Let’s pray.