Let It Flow!

Gonna be sharing this morning a little bit about this when Jesus says, I've got a river of those who believe in me will have a river of life flowing out of them. Now a number of years ago, I was at a youth convention in San Diego, California. 4,000 teenagers at this youth convention. It was huge. Actually, 3,000 girls and 1,000 boys, between the ages of 16 and 18.

And all the boys were just whispering, ratio, ratio. It was a pretty exciting and adventurous youth division. Anyway, we sung this worship song. I've got a river of life flowing out of me. Like, I don't know it.

I won't try and sing it for you. I don't sing very well as the sound guy's heard in his earmuffs while I've been singing away here. But sounds like I've a river of life flowing out of me. And then after this worship service was over, I went downstairs, needed to go to the bathroom. Lined up at the urinal was about 12 boys all singing, I've got a river of life flowing out of me.

And I remember thinking, I'm pretty sure that's not what that text is about. So a few weeks ago, when I came across it again in my reading, I thought, oh, I'm gonna just play with this for a while, and it just turned into a bit of a sermon. So a few reflections today on that. I wanna read from Ezekiel 47 for starters. By the way, if you love doing personal Bible study, I'm gonna look at Ezekiel 47 and at John this morning, but the river of life theme actually starts in Genesis chapter two, so the second account of creation.

When you get home, you might wanna read that. It also reappears in Revelation 22 in the first two verses, so it actually is a theme that goes all the way from Genesis through Revelation, from the Genesis poem through the dream of the new kingdom. But we're gonna start at Ezekiel 47 and read the first 12 verses. This is part of a much bigger vision that Ezekiel has given, so we're only reading a little bit of it. It says, the man who brought me back to the entrance of the temple, the man brought me back to the entrance of the temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple towards the east, for the temple faced east.

The water was coming down from under the south side of the temple, south of the altar. He then brought me out through the north gate and led me around the outside to the outer gate facing east, and the water was flowing from the south side. If you're confused already, stick with me. It's alright. As the man went eastward with a measuring line in his hand, he measured off a thousand cubits, and he led me through the water that was ankle deep.

He measured off another thousand cubits and led me through the water that was knee deep. He measured off another thousand and led me through the water that was up to the waist. He measured off another thousand, but now it was a river that I could not cross because the river had risen and was deep enough to swim in, a river that no one could cross. He asked me, son of man, do you see this? Then he led me back to the bank of the river.

When I arrived there, I saw a great number of trees on each side of the river. He said to me, this water flows towards the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah where it enters the sea. When it empties into the sea, the water there becomes fresh. Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the water river flows. There will be large numbers of fish because this water flows there and makes the saltwater fresh.

So where the river flows, everything will live. Fishermen will stand along the shore. From En Gidde through to En Iglaem, there will be places for spreading nets. The fish will be of many kinds, like the fish of the great sea. But the swamps and the marshes will not become fresh.

They will be left for salt. Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves won't wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month, they will bear because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.

And also John chapter seven verses 25 to 41. At that point, some of the people of Jerusalem began to ask, isn't this the man they're trying to kill? This is speaking about Jesus. Here he is speaking publicly, and they're not saying a word to him. Have the authorities really concluded that he is the Christ?

But we know where this man is from. When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from. Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out, yes, you know me, and you know where I'm from. I'm not here on my own, but he who sent me is true. You do not know him, but I know him because I am from him, and he sent me.

Jesus has a weirder sentences sometimes, doesn't he? And at this, they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him because his time had not yet come. Still many of the crowd put their faith in him. They said, when the Christ comes, he will do more miraculous signs than this man. The Pharisees heard the crowd whispering such things about him.

Then the chief priests and the Pharisees sent temple guards to arrest him. Jesus says, I'm only with you for a short time, and then I go to the one who sent me. You will look for me, but you will not find me. And where I am, you cannot come. The Jews said to one another, where does this man intend to go that we can't find him?

Will he go to where our people live, scattered among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks? What did he mean when he said, you will look for me, but you will not find me? And where am I? You can't come. On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out in a loud voice, if anyone is thirsty, let him come and drink.

Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him. By this he meant the spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time, the spirit had not been given since Jesus had not yet been glorified. On hearing his words, some of the people said, surely this man is the prophet. Others said, he is the Christ.

Let's pray while we tack before we tackle that one. Father, I just wanna pray this morning that as we seek to come under Your word and to be able to explore that and enjoy that, I wanna pray that You'll reveal Christ to us. We wanna be shaped like Jesus, and we know that the purpose of Your word is to reveal Him to us. And therefore, we pray that that encounter will happen today. I wanna pray that as I seek to explore this, that You will take what I say and You will cause it by Your spirit to bear fruit amongst Your church.

And if anything that is said by me that is not aligned to Your good truth, that You will cast it away to some barren place and not allow it to take root here. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Let's have a sip of water. I'm really nervous.

I hear you're a tough crowd. Nah. In the Jewish calendar, there are seven major feasts that the Jewish people have. Now if you think you knew how to party, you haven't partied like a Jew. There are seven religious feasts in this whole calendar, and what these feasts do is they're often massive parties.

There's a lot of food. There's a lot of wine. There's a lot of days that it goes on. It goes on and on. At these festivals or at these feasts, what happens there is that they're designed to tell and to retell the story of what God has done.

So it's designed to pass on to the children, to evoke imagination in the children to ask, why are we doing this? Why are we sleeping under huts? Why are we having Passover? And all these kinds of things. It's a way that the faith is passed on.

It's a way that God's people remember what God has done. They get together and they have a big festival or a big feast about it. And there's seven of these feasts that they party through. And even though they're parties, they're serious moments. They're serious moments of education, serious moments of remembrance, serious moments of sacrifice, and these are kind of serious yet very festive kinds of feasts.

There's a feast of Passover. There's a feast of booths. There's a feast of weeks. There's a feast of atonement, and there's a few more than that. And today, when we meet Jesus in this feast, we meet him at the Feast of Booths, or sometimes it's called the Feast of Tabernacles.

And in this Feast of Tabernacles, this goes for seven days straight, and it's the most expensive of all of the feasts that the Jews have. For these seven days, nobody is allowed to work. Many, many animals are slain during this feast. And every day, the priests slay animals, and they have expensive wine, and they pour water, and they pour wine down this altar that they sacrifice these animals on. And what happens at this Feast of Booths is that everybody has to come in their families.

And as families, they bring branches like palm branches and other leafy trees, and they build little huts. And what happens is for the seven days straight, as families, they sleep in these huts. And the reason is that the whole feast is to remind them of the fact that they slept in makeshift houses because God rescued them out of Egypt. And for the forty years that they journeyed through the desert before getting to the promised land, they slept in these huts, which is why it's the Feast of Booths or the Feast of Tabernacles because of the little houses that they sleep in. So this is this major kind of feast that goes on.

It's an expensive feast. It's a feast that people have to turn up to in massive numbers, and there's a huge amount of people seven days straight, a massive celebration, a massive time of education, and remembering, and celebrating, and coming back to the Lord. It's an amazing time, but this feast, this year, it had gone on for many, many, many, many years prior, and it was always much the same. But this year, the Feast of Booths is going to be different. Because this year in which we read now, there's something going on.

There's something lurking in the background of this feast this time. Because this time, there's a man that's been walking around the neighbourhood for some months performing miracles. This time, there's this man, this God man, that's been in the neighbourhood, a rising tension amongst the place. This year, the feast is divided. This year, there are people that think maybe this God man is actually the Messiah, and others are saying maybe he's not.

This year at this feast, this massive celebration, the air must be tense because half of the people, or maybe more than half, who knows, wanna kill someone. Half of the people have got death on their brain. We've gotta kill the God man. This year, the feast is gonna be different because in the shadows out there in the desert, this God man is lurking, and people are not sure what's going on. And so strong as his influence has been that the whole feast is tainted by the fact that there's this person in the area and what's gonna happen because he's been known for the fact that he turns up to places, and he does things like heals people.

He's been known for the fact that he's been in the region for the time, and he proclaims to be the Son of God, which is blasphemy in the eyes of many of these things. This year, out of history, this feast is gonna be a very different time because the God man is here, and the feast goes for six days. It runs as it normally does. The wine is poured down the altar. The water is poured down the altar, and the festivals, the sacrifices of the animals are made, the people living in their huts, and on the last day, the God man appears.

On the last day, he turns up out of the desert, and instead of just hanging back and kind of being a good Jew, what he has to do, he has to kind of make it about himself in some way. He ruins the feast in some kind of way because he stands up, and it says over the crowd. He says, if anyone believes in me, they will have as it says in the scriptures, they will have streams of living water flowing out of them. Like, what does that mean? Like, what are you trying to say, Jesus?

Come on. Who turns up at a massive religious festival and just kind of captures it and says, if you believe in me, you're going to have streams of living water flowing out of you. Like, what does he mean? What does that mean? In order to understand what that means, it's helpful to know that out of the seven feasts I think I went like that at the start when I said seven feasts.

Anyway, I'm from Victoria. That happens. You know? Frostbite from the rest of my fingers. It's kinda try to hide it normally.

And out of the seven feasts, there are three feasts that are the biggest of all. And out of these three feasts, every Jewish boy, every Jewish man over the age of 13 has to be in attendance. And this is one of those three feasts. So this, out of the seven feasts, is one of the largest feasts, one of the three biggest ones attended by every Jewish boy over the age of 13.

And we know that Jewish schooling systems, that every Jewish boy by about the age of 10 has to know the whole of the Torah off by heart. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, off by heart. And by about the age of 13, the expectation is that a Jewish boy will know the entire Old Testament off by heart. Genesis right through to Malachi.

And because that was one of those feasts, when Jesus says, those who believe in me will have streams of living water flowing out of them, every person over the age of 13 there would have known that's Ezekiel 47. That's what he's talking about, the vision that Ezekiel had back then, cause he's repeating those words. He's repeating that moment. And Jesus is saying that all of you who believe in me will be the fulfilment of Ezekiel 47. All those who believe in me will have streams of living water flowing out of them, and the vision of Ezekiel that we see right there is the fact that the streams of living water pour out of the temple, and as it pours out of the temple, it makes its way down into the sea, and the sea loses its saltiness because the water makes the sea fresh.

And out of this fresh water, teams of fish flow through, and people are gonna throw nets. People are gonna fish for food, and people will eat. And it talks about the fact that trees are gonna grow, and those trees will constantly be bearing fruit. And the leaves of those trees will be useful for healing as well. And there's this idea that when the stream of living water flows out of the temple, that the land will be healed, that the land will show abundance, that things will be put right, that out of an ugly world, beauty will be made real again, that out of a world of injustice, things will be put right, that out of a world that's in need or famine, it won't happen because abundance will flow, because things will be put right as the streams of living water flow out of them.

And we don't know what the Jews were waiting to happen when they read Ezekiel 47, but what Jesus is saying is that those who believe in him will have these streams of living water, which is the Spirit of God flowing out of them. A few things I wanna say on this. Firstly, you believe in Jesus. If you believe that He died and rose again for you, and if you've repented of your sins, you have the Spirit of God within you. That's what we reflect on in this text.

You have the Spirit of God within you if you believe in Jesus. This is not some little spirit. You know, this is the Spirit of God that hovered across the waters before creation. This is the Spirit of God that rose Jesus from the dead. This is the Spirit of God that was breathed out to all believers at Pentecost with flames on their head.

This is the Spirit of God that lives in you. And it seems funny because we sometimes think that we have sort of like this lesser spirit or this little spirit or this part of a spirit. No. You have the Spirit of God in you if you believe in Jesus. That same spirit that possessed Jesus Himself possesses us as His believers.

We've got to be amazed by that. We've got to understand that. And when Jesus walked the earth, Jesus could only be in one place at one time because he was one man with two feet like you and me that could just kind of walk. But as Jesus has ascended into heaven and sent His spirit to be down there as believers, everywhere His believers are is where Jesus is because the Spirit of Jesus lives within them. Do you get it?

Jesus can actually be in a lot more places now than he was when he walked on this earth. And when Jesus brought healing and when Jesus brought restoration and when Jesus brought justice and when Jesus brought beauty to this earth as he walked, now He does it throughout neighbourhoods and throughout countries right across the world as every believer walks and steps in tune with the Spirit of God. Second point, you are a temple. You know, the image in Ezekiel is the fact that there is this temple, and out of the temple the water flows. And then we see it, we read later in the apostle Paul writing the fact that our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit.

And sometimes people use language and talk about church being the house of God or the temple. Well, it's not really that at all. That's rubbish. What happened in Jesus is that He made us believers the temple, and we are the temple of God. You wanna know where God lives?

God lives in you. God lives in me. God lives in us. That's where God lives. That's where the temple is.

We are the temple of God. And finally, I wanna say, you are a healer. Sounds a bit hippie, I know, but I've got the hair for it to say that, so it's alright. It's you are a healer in the sense that out of you, living waters flow, which is the Spirit of God. Out of this temple, living waters flow to the land.

And what happens when the living waters flow? The trees grow. Things are put right. Where the salt makes sure that nothing can flourish, we bring fresh water, which causes things to flourish and be put right as the Spirit of God flows out of us.

We are a healing people containing the Spirit of God. You see, there's this fallacy that exists in Christian thought a lot today. It's a stupid idea that when we come to Jesus and he forgives us our sins and we know the wonderful life of adventure of living in Him, that we're just here to pray. We're just here to be good. We're just here to go to church and wait for that day when we can go to heaven and it'll all be over.

It's not like that. We're not saved to boring religion. You know, Christ comes and He saves us, and then He invites us to be a part of His adventure of putting things right, to be a part of His adventure of healing this world, to be a part of the adventure of saving His cosmos, and He invites us to be a part of that. You know, to follow Jesus, to believe in Jesus is to live the life of Jesus and to live like Christ in this world empowered by His Spirit. You know, the call to follow Jesus is the call to a life of adventure, the call to a life of passion, a call to a life of purpose, and sometimes a life of rebellion to be able to see that God's kingdom reigns here on earth.

That's what we're saved to. That's what we have when we're in Jesus. That's what we're invited into. That's what God calls us to. We're not just here to wait for that final day when everything will be right again.

The Bible says, thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. We wanna see the kingdom of heaven on earth in the here and the now because Jesus came to put it right, and He's filled His temple with His Spirit to bring about righteousness. So I wanna say this. Let it flow. Just let it flow.

In Phnom Penh, there's a guy called Pastor Abraham, and he heard about a slum area that had been bulldozed by the government, and they moved this whole slum off to another place about 10 kilometres out of town. And what this pastor did was he just moved into the slum area because everybody was getting sick because there was it was swampy, and there was a lot of waterborne diseases and whatever else and bugs. So what he did was he said, well, if this is a world where Jesus died to put things right, then people shouldn't be getting sick because of these simple things. And he saw to it that they dug drainage to clear up and to dry out the land that the slum was built on. And he said because of Jesus and because of the kind of world that God created and what Jesus died for, people shouldn't have to live in cardboard boxes.

So he arranged for simple houses to be built for his people. Because Jesus died for His world to put it right, people kids shouldn't have to go without education, so they built a school in this neighbourhood. And then people started coming to Christ and becoming believers and followers in Him. So they built a church as well. And then they were still very poor, so what he did was he arranged for one truck that would leave every morning to truck the men off to work in the city and then to truck them home at the same time every night. And he has brought the slum out of poverty and out of sickness and into a place of flourishing and into a place that is healed and into a place where things are put right and into a place where beauty exists in that which once was ugly.

And maybe you and I aren't as influential as Pastor Abraham. Maybe the Gold Coast is not really that much of a slum. Mind you, some would say. But what would it look like? What would it look like if you and I let it flow in our workplace?

What would it look like if we took seriously the fact that we are the temple of God that encompasses the Spirit and out of us flows streams of living water, streams of healing and justice and beauty? What would that look like in your workplace if you let it flow? What would it look like in your schoolyards if you let it flow? What would it look like in your classrooms at uni if you let it flow? What would it look like on your social media if you let it flow?

Your sporting clubs, your social clubs, your family dinners. What would it look like if you let it flow? Streams of living water bringing healing and justice and beauty to God's good creation. I'm gonna leave you with just three words. Let it flow.

Let it flow. Let it flow. Amen. Father, I wanna pray that we, in our spirits, in our hearts, in our lives, know, will truly know that we are Your temple, that in us, the Spirit of God lives and resides and flows out of us. It's just so hard to get our heads around, and we think we're so we live like we're so beaten up half the time and so small and insignificant.

I pray that it may dawn upon us just the enormity of what this means. And then I pray that we will be able to enjoy seeing the fruit of seeing justice and healing and rightness and beauty restored to an ugly world around us. Father, give us the courage. Give us the boldness to be able to go forth and live in that way. Thank you for Your Spirit.

Thank you for the adventure and the dream that it is to live in Christ. In whose name we pray. Amen.