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Waist Deep In Life
Third in a series on Ezekiel
A sermon by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, August 28, 2005
All of us have through the summer followed what was going
on in Iraq. It is of such key concern to us because we have people over there.
Because of that, I have taken some sermons this summer from the prophet Ezekiel,
because you see all of Ezekiel was written in Iraq. They called it Babylon in
those days. Perhaps we can tie into and understand how Ezekiel must have felt.
Let me tell you a little background first. You see there’s
a key date: 722 BC. There were twelve tribes of Israel and ten of them were
conquered by Assyria and carried off into Assyria not to be heard from again.
Two were left – Judah and Benjamin, Judah being the big one. By 597, Babylon
had conquered Assyria. Jerusalem rebelled and Babylon with all of its might sent
a bunch down there to straighten it all out and carried 10,000 of the people,
the brightest, the youngest, the strongest, back to Babylon.
Ezekiel was one of them and in the early part of Ezekiel he
is writing warnings to Jerusalem about straightening up. Then in 586, another
rebellion happened and this time Babylon would have none of it. They sent the
full Army, the top general whose name was Nebuchadnezzar and took Jerusalem by
force, tore down the walls, tore down the temple and desecrated it and carried
most of the population back to Babylon. We know it as the Babylonian exile.
W.F. Albright, an Old Testament scholar, estimates that
before the war happened there were probably around 250,000 living in the
Jerusalem area. After there were only 25,000 left; many killed and many, many
carried off into Babylon. How do you suppose Ezekiel felt when the word came
that Jerusalem was no more? I think it would have been like one of our soldiers
or Marines in Iraq now counting the days until they can come home, praying for
safety day in and day out and then word comes, some terrorists have hit your
hometown and destroyed everything – it’s gone.
Ezekiel in his grief and even despair is given a vision.
The first part of it is a temple, but then after the temple the vision is
given. He is given a vision of a river. One of the Psalmists says, “There is a
river that makes glad the people of God.” This is just such a river.
Turn please to Ezekiel 47. It’s the first 12 verses that we
are crucially interested in. This is a vision and a graphic, a symbol, and a
drama of hope. “Well a man brought me to the entrance of the temple and I saw
water coming out from under the threshold of the temple.” Go down to the last
phrase in verse 2, “And the water was flowing from the south side.”
Now if you will jump down please to the 8th
verse, “He said to me this water flows toward the eastern region and goes down
to the Araba, (that’s the Jordan river basin) and there it enters the sea, the
Dead Sea, when it empties into the sea, the water there becomes fresh. Swarms
of living creatures will live wherever the river flows and there will be large
numbers of fish because the water flows there and makes the salt water fresh so
that when the river flows everything will live and fishermen will stand along
the shore. (Down in verse 12) Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks
of the river and every month they will bear because the water from the sanctuary
flows to them.” This is the word of the Lord.
The first thing I want you to notice is that in the Old
Testament, river means life. Now for a Christian, when we look at the cross and
the empty tomb it is for us the amazing proclamation that God conquers death,
the little deaths of life, the little disappointments of life, the little
discouragements of life, God is about the business of life period. On the
cross, it seemed death conquered. Buried in an empty tomb, God raised Him up
and He is alive and well and circulating through our world. That’s the
Christian vision, the cross and the empty tomb.
In the Old Testament, the cross hadn’t happened yet and the
empty tomb hadn’t happened yet, so how is God going to communicate to Ezekiel
what God is about and that life conquers death and disappointment and even
grief? He does it through the image of a river. The first thing God says about
this river is, it flows, its alive, its going, and the next thing He says is,
its going straight toward the Dead Sea.
Now when Ezekiel heard Dead Sea, he must have known. Dead
Sea for Ezekiel would have meant death. You see, the fresh water from the
Galilee goes down the Jordan and flows into the Dead and Sea and all of the
sudden it isn’t fresh anymore. The Dead Sea conquers everything. It is so full
of salt. I’ve been there. Even I can float on the Dead Sea, but nothing can
grow there. Salt does that. It’s a wonderful seasoning, but have you ever
noticed when you put salt on the ice in the winter on your walks there’s a
little warning on the package that says, “Don’t sweep this on your flowers?”
And now the Lord God changes everything. He says that from
the temple, from the throne of God is what Revelation will say because
Revelation uses this same imagery, from the throne of God a River flows and that
River flows right straight down the Jordan valley. Oh, the Jordan valley,
that’s the richest part. The Jordan Valley into the Dead Sea and it transforms
the Dead Sea. All of the sudden the Dead Sea begins to be alive. Listen to how
verse 9 talks about it. Verse 9 says, “Swarms of living creatures will live
wherever the River flows and there will be water, there will be large numbers of
fish because the water flows there and makes the salt water fresh.” So where
the River flows everything will live. Hear this word please! The Lord God is
the God of life and He’s about the business of transforming non-life into life.
There are so many who just kind of walk through life as the
living dead. There is no energy, no lilt to their steps. Overcome by every
little thing. Tom Kennedy described them once as those who walk through life
half asleep and at night stay awake half awake saying that they stumble along
like onboard drunks and have at the end been nothing at all. Dead. And what
the Lord God does is He becomes the God of life. Moses said, “Choose life.”
Why? Because God chose it from the beginning, the Creator of Life.
What in the world is this visionary River about? Well,
it’s about the invisible, spiritual side of life; about the invisible, spiritual
resources that you have at your disposal. The question is not do you know about
them. The question is, do you use them? They are the resources of the spirit of
God, the resources of redemption, the resources of reconciliation, of
forgiveness, of healing, but the bottom line, they are the resources of life.
What else does he say? Well he says fishermen begin to
come. Look at what it says. In verse 10, “Fishermen will stand along the shore
from En Gedi to the River James. And there will be places for spreading nets and
the fish will be of many kinds (like the fish of the Great Sea, that’s the
Mediterranean).” Fishermen, this is such a nice touch. Aren’t you glad that
was put in because I’ve never seen a fishermen yet who fished where there wasn’t
anything alive! As a matter of fact, fishermen congregate where fish are being
caught and they keep their eye open for the one who’s catching and there they go
there.
I remember some years ago when we took our grandson Peter
to Baptist World Alliance when it met at Prince Edward Island up in Canada. He
was about 7 or 8, and Peter was a fishermen. He was born that way, bless his
heart! He has the karma, he has the genes, he has the whatever, but he can
catch fish. We went Deep Sea fishing with all of the sons and all of the
in-laws that wanted to go and went way out in the Gulf one day and guess who
caught the biggest fish? Peter. He’s a fisherman. So I wasn’t surprised when I
said, “It’s a free afternoon. What do you want to do?” He said, “I want to go
fishing.”
Now we’re in a strange place. I go down to the concierge
and they phone around and they say there’s some little lakes out there that have
been stocked with rainbow trout and they have gear they will rent and you can go
down there and fish so we went. Peter had taken that rented gear that first
cast, wham! A big old rainbow trout! I didn’t fish at all that afternoon. I
was too busy taking fish off of his hook and baiting them. Of course, I very
well might not have caught any. Fish have really got to be dumb to get on my
hook. But what I noticed was other fisherman coning our way because they
weren’t catching much and here’s Peter just pulling them out like nobody’s
business. Pretty soon we had a small congregation and I said, “Peter, let’s go
fish where they were.” So we did around the lake. Now they’re all where we were
and we’re all where they were and guess who’s catching the fish now?
The whole point is, if there had been no fish in that
little lake nobody would have been there. Isn’t this a nice touch in Ezekiel?
Peterson translates this, “The fishermen will stand shoulder to shoulder
alongside that River of life.” Well, En Gedi, that’s the wilderness. It says
that the River runs through En Gedi. Now there are some springs there, but
that’s where David hid out fleeing from King Saul, in a cave. Nobody lives in
En Gedi. They may stop there because there are some springs, but this River;
this River even flows through the wilderness times of life.
Listen to me…sooner or later you’re going to go through a
wilderness time in your life when everything that you thought was in place isn’t
anymore and the wilderness time of life God says is not a foreign place to me.
Even Jesus found His purpose in a wilderness time and what God does in the
wilderness places is give us our identity and our purpose. Oh and look at the
trees down in verse 12, “Alongside the River are trees.” Everybody knows fruit
comes in its season, not these trees. Symbolic of God’s River and of His
purposes they never run out of fruit and they’re always in season.
Now friends, isn’t that a beautiful picture? A River of
life that flows even into deadness and non-life, that flows even into the
wilderness. I have a question for you, it’s Ezekiel’s question. How deep do
you want to go in that River? Look in verse 3, “A man went with a measuring
line and he measured off 1,000 cubics (1,000 cubics is 1,500 feet and 500 yards,
500 yards is 5 football fields). He measured 500 yards ankle deep and then he
measured another 500 yards and now its knee deep and then waist deep and then
over the head and nobody can go there.
There are four things you can do. One is stay on the shore
and never even stick your toe in the water. In case that happens here’s what
you’ve done, you’ve taken all of the spiritual resources God has at your
disposal and you’ve refused to cash them in. But suppose you’re at least
willing to get in ankle deep. The trouble with going in ankle deep is not that
you’re on the right road, you are, just don’t stop there because you see, ankle
deep people, they don’t have the kind of commitment to keep going. They’ve
stalled out before they’ve started, almost stillborn.
Knee deep are those kind of folks and I hope you won’t stop
there, who are really interested in learning, but they have one great failure
and all of us get here sometimes, they separate God’s life from their lives and
they never bring God’s life into what they’re doing on Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday and so forth. God’s life becomes a Sunday event.
That’s not the way it was supposed to be. Does it say in
the scripture here that the River only flows on the Sabbath? No it doesn’t
that. Go in waist deep. Waist deep the breakers can hit you. Waist deep all
of the sudden you can find some insecure footing, but waist deep let me tell you
what happens…you’re in there with God and God’s with you. You’re in the River,
you’re as deep as you can go and you’re taking God everywhere you go and God is
with you everywhere.
How deep do you
want to go? Whatever you do, don’t just stand on the shore. God provided the
River of the Spirit of God, the River of life, the River of Redemption, the
River of renewal, the River that flows even in the wilderness and the desert.
Don’t just stand there, go waist deep.
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