The Wonder of The River of Life

Did you ever wonder? Did you ever wonder?

I do. Did you ever wonder? Why the sun always rises, but the stars never fall? Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says enough?

Enough. Imagine, like me, you're going to take a wild ride that God took me on today. It actually has been taking me on all week, and this idea of the river of life, the wonder of the river of life. I'm sure many of you have read the story in Genesis about this river that flows out of Eden, and it breaks into four different rivers, and it's a beautiful thing.

If you listen to John Eldredge's podcast this week, and it's a Wild at Heart podcast, absolutely spectacular on the river of life. And he pointed out something in that that I think we all kind of know in our souls, but I don't know that you've ever really seen the practicality of it, is that there is a river of life that flows through the garden, and that there's a garden in Revelation, as there is a garden in Genesis, and certainly when you look at all the imagery of the temple and all the image of the tabernacle and in the Song of Solomon, much is said about this garden. And so it's interesting that if they'd used all that imagery for the temple, and they used all that imagery for the tabernacle, then obviously if our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, which we know from obviously the New Testament, then our body essentially is a garden.

And we know that this temple has a holy of holies, and we've talked about many times in my podcast and my broadcast that your heart is the holy of holies. And so if there is a river that flows out of the Garden of Eden that is so well described, then clearly your heart would be the headwaters of that river, right? And so when you look at the fundamentals of that, it's like, oh, right, that there is a river, right? And your heart is pumping, obviously, through all your veins, which are rivers and tributaries and all sorts of things, every bit of oxygen that you breathe in, and all the nutrients that you eat that come through your stomach and your intestines and your bloodstream, all those things come to furnish your whole body with what?

Life. The river of life. It is your physical heart. But obviously it's pointing to a greater image of the idea that the temple was itself the heart of the camp of the Israelites, but it also from it flowed, obviously, the spiritual water of life in so many different ways and injured your heart then in this image, right? As Jesus pointed out, the woman in the well, you can read that story, obviously, in the Gospel of John, that here would be this river that out of you will flow springs of living water, right?

It literally fountains in so many different ways. And so as you begin to just process all this, like, oh, my goodness. So as we begin to examine our hearts, as we begin to, you know, the place where you meet with God is not unlike the Holy of Holies, like you meet with him in your heart and out of your heart flow these rivers. And so in the description of all these rivers, God goes into great.

I've always wondered that always seemed like me. Oh, man, this got my wonder in a wonder. And I mean, I was pondering and pondering about no doubt about these rivers. Like, why did God go into so much detail about the Pishon and the Tigris and the Euphrates? And why is it talking about that it surrounded the area of Cush? And why did the last one not have much to say about the Euphrates?

I mean, why? There's just more questions than there ever was answers there. But it just seemed like there had to be a very practical reason for these four rivers coming out of there. And what is that telling us about our life practically and what we do today? Well, you know, just really basic. You got how many ventricles in your heart?

OK. And really basic. You know, there's there's lots of imagery that just is very, very practical when it comes down to these four rivers that come out of one river. And then you can't help but think that the word river in Hebrew has everything to do with faith, because it starts with the letter none, which has to do with faith. And so there's this idea of of of this great faith that's going to flow through you like a river.

Well, you know, fascinatingly, the idea of Jordan, you can hear it. The Jordan River is it means to descend in Hebrew is what the word Jordan means. And when you think about it, it it flows right up there from Hermon.

It starts somewhere. The headwaters in Lebanon and up there in the top of the mountains and it goes down to the lowest place on earth, which is the Dead Sea. OK, so it does descend and if it doesn't flow out of the Dead Sea. Right. Then that's the reason the Dead Sea is dead is because the water does never come out of it. Well, as you begin to process this idea of the Jordan, you can hear the J sound at the beginning and that is a yud. And so that's light that that is coming down. And then you you hear the idea of Jordan and it ends in a Dalud nun, which is Dan.

And we talked many times. We'll talk about it one more time that the idea of Dan is this idea of that, that the tribe that followed last in the desert. Their job was to pick up the strays. Right. That they went through, you know, they were the last people to set out to make sure that nobody got left behind.

They were after the lost sheep of Israel. That's what they that's what Dan means. And they would judge. And Jacob even actually said that, that Dan would judge his people.

Well, actually, the word Dan is the makeup of the letter Tav, which is the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet, which all points to the last season, because there are four seasons. Right. And there are four rivers and all this stuff connects and we're going to go through each of the rivers beautifully. And we're not going to do that in this podcast because we'd take up the whole, you know, but so I'm planning on doing a series on these rivers.

But right now, I just want to talk about that. The idea is that even your heart requires a river. In other words, if your heart requires blood itself in order to even pump in, as a matter of fact, if those veins get clogged, you will be dead. I mean, that's the widow maker and all that people talk about the veins and arteries that go to your heart are critical to your heart's health. And very similarly, the Jordan.

Right. We've got to be connected to the Jordan or we die spiritually or in order to become alive. You've got to be connected to the Jordan. And so where did John the Baptist baptize everybody in a river? And what kind of river was that? Oh, it was the Jordan. And what was it doing?

It was descending because obviously God, he descended into his temple and it became filled with his glory. OK. And so all this is a picture of something that goes on in your heart as you begin to. And I heard this in actually another podcast of John Eldridge, actually. Morgan Snyder's podcast that he had this guy who had written Eugene Peterson's biography, and he talked about that Eugene Peterson had a conversational intimacy with the Bible. In other words, like and I like my friend Harold told me, as the Bible study was doing today, he said, you know, you see this particular passage and it's like you hear the sound of silence by Simon and Garfunkel. You know, hello, darkness, my old friend. Well, you know, here's this passage you hadn't read in a long time. Like maybe it's the rivers that come out of Eden and you go, oh, you know, hello, rivers, my old friend.

Hello. You know, like and as you're as you're having this conversation with scripture, you know, you're letting God ask you questions and answer questions. And and certainly I've had these questions for years.

Why? And why is there all this detail about these rivers? OK, well, here here's the very, very, very practical thing that's going on.

All right. That out of us bring rivers of life. And here's the overall arching concept that God's been teaching me that clearly, if somebody's nature is going to be changed, they were born not knowing God, not being able to God. The only person that can save anybody is the Holy Spirit in Jesus.

In other words, I can't save a soul because I can't change the frequency of their radio station. Their nature has to change to where they can see the light, where they can begin to see Jesus. But interestingly, what God's been teaching me over the last week and I'm just now releasing is the idea of darkness, that there was a darkness. There was a cloud that came at the at if you look carefully at the Mount of Transfiguration, there was a certainly a cloud that came down before Moses went into the mountain and in our own lives.

Right. There came a cloud that let us know that we are in the dark and all of a sudden we hungered for the light. And at the point in time you turn to God, you repent for comfort and you turn to God, then he can turn your radio station to W.G.O.D.

You have to die literally to yourself in order for him to come. But in order to do that, there has to be a cloud. There has to be some kind of darkness so that you can see, wow, I don't I'm not in the light, which is exactly what John the Baptist was doing. He was he was creating a cloud saying, look, look at the way you're acting.

Look at the things that you're doing. You're rocking around in the dark. You need the light in order to do that.

He couldn't provide the light. He couldn't change their radio station, but he could provide in them a thirst for this river. OK. And so as we pray for those that we love.

Right. Because love never fails. And so we're going to pray because God's the one that can change their radio station, the W.G.O.D. God's the one that that's going to send people into their life. That's going to create the darkness and the hunger for and the thirst for his word.

And so we can be those witnesses and we can talk about how Jesus worked in our life, which creates that thirst and that hunger for somebody else so that they can get what? The river that they that they need. But we we through our rivers that well up into living water. You see, it's a beautiful thing. It's an amazing thing that has to do with fruitfulness. Right. Because if you go back and you look in Revelation and you see that it's we're going to revisit the tree of life and it's on both sides of the bank of the river that is in our hearts.

OK. And leaves of which are to provide healing for the nations. Right. And so I don't know if you thought about it, but clearly we have access, especially in the end.

Here's the application of all this to me is you've got people that you love and love is part of God's nature and it cannot fail. It's just made impossible. No more can. Can you hear a dog whistle? Then God can fail. OK, because it's not in our nature to hear a dog whistle. It's not in our nature to sniff around on the ground like a dog. But by the same token, it's totally in God's nature that he cannot fail.

He can't he can't lie and he can't fail. All right. And so we know that. And so by faith, that faith, that's a river that runs through our body. And by faith, we pray for those people that we want to know Jesus by faith. We believe that God is making these moves to create a world and it's going to be by faith and our prayers and our witnesses that we truly impact this world, whatever that looks like. I mean, it is the wonder of the river of life that flows out of our hearts and into the world. I mean, what what an amazing, amazing gift God has given us in the picture of our hearts and these four rivers, which will go into detail in future podcasts. Thanks for listening.