The Wonder of The River Around The Land Of Dance

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. A wonder of the river that's around the land of dance. How wonderful is that? Like, oh, I've wondered about dance before, but this one is really amazing. As we talked about yesterday, that the river of life is in our hearts, is that to an extent it pumps out of our hearts into these four heads. And we promised yesterday that we would get into the description of these four rivers individually. And the whole idea is an amazing meditation of God.

How does how do you use my spiritual heart to pump out living water? And just to, you know, continue in that imagery, you know, I went and studied more about the temple and the imagery of the garden within the temple and the imagery of the garden within the tabernacle and certainly what's in Revelation. And just something to ponder, you know, that obviously if you ever go to a garden, there are some things that jump out at you.

Colors are one thing that really jumps out at you, especially the color red. And there you can see that in the both the temple and the tabernacle, there was plenty of that and all sorts of different colors of blue and yellow. You know, gardens are beautiful. But the other thing gardens do is they smell amazing.

And so guess what? All these incenses that were made, if you think about the perfumes that were used to create that smell inside the temple, you know where they got those? Well, many of them from the resin of trees and many of them were from flowers. Right. And so it's it's it's the whole idea of a garden is you get all that.

And if you've ever been in one, you know, the smells I'm talking about. And so it's really, really cool as you think about, wow, how does all this practically flow out of my heart? And so as we get to what we're going to talk about today, you know, we'll just pick it up in Genesis chapter two, verse 10. And it says a river went out of Eden. And again, this is your heart's this garden. So here you go.

Take a look. And it says and then it was parted and became into four heads. And then the first the name of the first is the Pishon. And that is it, which compass the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold and the gold of that land is good. And there is Dilem and the onyx stone. So, you know, there's really so many cool things about this this river, like number one.

Right. That it is it is this idea of the Pishon, which is is an idea of the presence of God in so many different ways, because you can hear the pay that's at the beginning of that, which literally is the presence of God and the idea of of spreading out. And they shall spread themselves. I remember when we studied the book of Habakkuk and we talked about how the horsemen were going to come and they were going to spread themselves with this. This idea is very much connected to this idea of the Pishon, which is, again, the spreading of God's presence through this river. And so when you think about a river and you think about water, well, you know, the word is water. And sort of one of the things I was thinking today is that in order for a river to flow out of me, it's got to first flow into me.

Right. And I've got to study the word so that it can flow out in and go deep and wide like we're talking about the Pishon or sometimes it goes out as a fountain like it did sort of from yesterday. We'll talk about that when a different river. But these these rivers all have something unique about them and it's in their name, which has to do with their identity. And of course, they're a picture of something that is actually in the Garden of God. It is heaven, which is also in our hearts. And so here we go.

Let's take a trip down the Pishon. It says that it compasses about the land of Havilah. Now, Havilah is a beautiful, amazing word. You can hear that eight sound in the beginning of it because it begins with a het like the word chesed and like many words that have to do with our union with God. And so that word Havilah actually is the word for the land of dance. And so I couldn't help but think about this river that is compassing about, you know, I see whirlpools as they're twirling because this particular dance is a marriage dance.

Why? That's why it starts with a het. Right. And I don't know if you've been to many weddings where they danced, but it's, you know, the excitement of this marriage is unbelievable. And dance is a result of those things. And so the idea of Havilah is really going to get into why the Pishon causes this kind of thing, like as people really, really become more united with God.

Think about it. At some point in time, something you said made some impact on somebody. You planted a seed of the word of God somehow and they got to know God and they got to dance with God, which is essentially what this idea is. And of course, when you think of this idea of dance, I immediately thought of the Song of Solomon.

Right. And when you look at the, you know, how beautiful or the, you know, what will you look at in the Shulamite, would you look at her as the dance of Manichaeim? And that dance, you know, right, proceeds, you know, how beautiful are your feet and shoes? The idea of the dance and feet are really connected. But you can see that the word feet begins with a pay because it has to do with God's presence and or somebody being present, as the case may be, because their feet are there. And the idea of dance, they're actually using those two letters that are the prominent word in Havilah, which is a het and a lamed. And so that lamed is, you know, what we aspire to be with God.

In other words, when the lamed is the letter that goes the highest above the line as we aspire to be with God. And so you think about this dance and, you know, and I think about dances on a practical level, especially, you know, how they affect your heart and young love and those kind of things. And I remember a couple of funny stories.

Well, you know, one kind of amazing story had to do with the dance that I went to in seventh grade, first dance I ever went to in my life. And there was this girl I was kind of interested in and I waited and waited to get up the courage to ask her to dance. And I finally did right as they began to play the song Hey Jude, which I really, really love the song Hey Jude. What I did not take into account is the fact that I am six foot five inches tall and she was about at that time maybe four ten. And so here I was at a very, very awkward position. And if you ever listen to Hey Jude, that song goes on and on and on and on.

If I'm not mistaken, it might even be 11 minutes. I forget how long it was, but I I know that it was excruciatingly awkward, right? Because here I am bent over like a tree trying to slow dance with this girl. So it made an image on me that I've never forgotten. But nonetheless, there's this idea of young love. And then actually the first girl I ever went out with, her name was Susan Siemens. And the reason that I asked her out was we did the square dancing thing. And the fact that she would even dance with me, she was absolutely a beautiful girl and she had a beautiful personality and a beautiful smile. And she was quite often my partner in this square dancing thing, class we were taking in high school. And oh, boy, did that flip my switch when you talk when I've talked about before that I would go down to the street where she lived. You know, that's the girl.

It was Susan Siemens. And it's amazing how that dancing led to that. And it was a square dance kind of thing. But then I can't help but think of the dance that my daughter just had were in her wedding.

Oh, the joy that was there in that dance. And so you can see that here, Adam and Eve, you know, they got to go to this land of Havilah where this river was compassing about and the river was the presence of God and God's word. And and when you just think of the whole idea of water, just beautiful comfort, all those things. And then it mentions that it's a land of gold, which obviously always is going to be talking about heaven in all sorts of different ways. But it's just a reflection of God and his glory in a way that we can kind of sense it.

You know, through the idea of gold and that reflection, but then it says a word that really had me a bit puzzled. It's it's dillium. It starts with a B-D-E. I mean, like, well, it's just like I did not really ever study that word or think about that word. But as it turns out, that that word is very much a perfume.

It's a it's a another tree resin, not unlike myrrh. And so that dillium, when you walked into this land of Havilah, undoubtedly one of the things that you would sense besides the dancing idea is is the smell of this dillium. And apparently dillium is pretty much a Bible word, as I had missed it, too, that one of the descriptions of manna was that it looked like dillium. And so, you know, it's kind of neat to think that this land has this this idea of dillium.

And when you look at that word in Hebrew, it as you might imagine, it starts with a bet because that's that that B sound in it and a dalad, which you can hear that. And when you look at it, actually, it has to do with like being set apart. And, you know, water does that, you know, it's really cool when you think about this river that's going to create this dillium and water sets things apart. Like if you're going to pan for gold, right, you're going to need some water in order to pan for gold and it helps you separate things. And so part of that living water that's coming out of your heart as you begin to meditate on this and ask God to fill your heart so that it can flow with this water and this land of dance.

You can you can think about the amazing fragrance of flowers and of fruitfulness that's going to come from that and this idea of being set apart by him. And so, you know, there and then this last idea is it's a land of not just onyx stones, it says onyx stone. And you may know that onyx stone is kind of an indication. You can see that when they did the offering in Exodus that they were asked to make an offering of their onyx stones.

And so it seemed to be a whole group of the stones that were in the effort. Right. And the word, when you look at it, has everything to do with identity because it almost looks like the word name. It actually is like the fire in the word name because it's Shema and it has this idea of identity.

Right. And when you think about how water and and all this is going to bring out your true identity, which has to do with fire and water, like what God really put in you, how exactly he did that. And you think of this, this whole idea of this dance with fire and water and this identity and gold. It's it's it's an amazing picture of what all God enables us to take part in being able to do this with other people. Because the thing I thought about this dance is not a whole lot of fun to just stand in a room and dance by yourself. But when you look closely at when it says David danced before the Lord, that word that's translated before.

Actually, if you look really closely in the Hebrew, it's faces. So it's almost an idea of he was dancing with God cheek to cheek with all his might. Right. And it's so much more fun to dance with God than anything I can think of.

Right. And my my my sister has this unbelievable vision she had of dancing with Jesus. And so I kind of went there this morning and danced with Jesus for a while in a song that I'm going to play at the end of this podcast that has to do with the square dance and just experience that that idea of what it would be like or what it is like. I guess I experienced what it is like for a moment, you know, in my heart to dance with Jesus so that when this water comes out of my heart, that it will help other people dance.

So this song is Simple Gifts by Jewel, and it is an old shaker hymn. And but it was meant very much to be danced to and certainly in a twirling fashion, as you can hear it go on. And I love the simplicity of it, obviously, is it's simple gifts. But I also love the idea of turning, turning till we come round right in Jesus's arms. I do pray that you would sense Jesus's arms around you that you can enjoy this immensely. It's a gift to be simple, it's a gift to be free, it's a gift to come down where you want to be. And when we find ourselves in the place just right, we'll be in the valley of love and delight. When true simplicity is gained to bow and to bend, we will not be ashamed to turn, turn. We'll be our delight till by turning, turning we come round right. It's a gift to be simple, it's a gift to be free, it's a gift to come down where you want to be. And when we find ourselves in the place just right, we'll be in the valley of love and delight. When true simplicity is gained to bow and to bend, we will not be ashamed to turn, turn. We'll be our delight till by turning, turning we come round right. Till turning, turning we come round right.