(Suggested Reading: Num. 21:1-18; John 7)
Rivers of Living Water
Life as we know it cannot exist without water. That is why Scripture speaks of "the water of life." But water can also be an agent of death in the raging seas, floods, and storms. This is to be expected in a world in which life itself takes fierce and gentle forms the tiger on the one hand and the deer on the other. The explanation is found, not in studying nature, but in revelation. Good and evil, light and darkness, characterize a world stamped by sin. It was not so in the beginning when God saw everything He had made, and behold it was very good. But man marred the creation by his fall. Scripture now calls him "the man of dust.”
God's Works With Water in the Old Creation of Gen. 1
Only by turning to God's thoughts on any subject do we get light. The beginning and ending of God's thoughts reveal His purpose and its fulfillment. For this reason the beginning and ending of God's thoughts concerning water is a rich subject for the enjoyment of our souls. God begins at the deep. The Spirit of God hovers over that. Because of the entrance Gen. 1:2 and the work Gen. 1:9, 10 of God in this world, the deep changes to the waters, the waters to the seas. Even so, the sea is not pleasurable to God, for in the eternal state the sea is no more Rev. 21:1. Yet it is from this waste that God raises the dry land, the whole of which is Eden a paradise in which He plants a garden. The thought of a garden is an enclosure and fruit. There God would enjoy man and man God. A river went out of Eden to water the garden. Then it was divided into four main streams. Such were God's thoughts for the earth at the beginning a river whose crystal clear streams should keep the whole earth green a delightsome thing. But we miss the point if we don't see that it was from the garden God's presence that this parting to bless the earth took place. Connect this with the end of God's dealings with the earth. It is from the millennial temple God's presence again that the "waters to swim in" come out "a river that could not be forded" Ezek. 47:5.
God's Work With Water in the New Creation—the Story of John's Two Pools
But if God purposed blessing for the earth in the beginning and will see that it is blessed in the end, what of the intervening period marred by sin? It is here that the two pools in John's gospel come in. These pools symbolize the ruin of man, a ruin agreeing to the primeval chaos of Gen. 1:2. At them we find man himself impotent and blind dust of the earth and truly as without form and void as the earth once was. Then there are the waters, not now the deep, but in two pools, motionless, confined by the earth. There is the Spirit of God, for every act in Jesus' life was done in His power. The Lord had told Nicodemus too that man must be born of water and of the Spirit. He is needful, both for life and power. And just as the Spirit of God came to the deep where the darkness and the great need were so does the Lord go up to Jerusalem to meet man's need at these pools, in the power of the Spirit.
a. Man is powerless under law, and blind to the glory of Christ by nature: The Lord said "sin no more" to the impotent man, who is simply a figure of Israel under law but powerless to keep it because of man's fallen nature. Acts 7:53 confirms this. It tells us that they had received the law as ordained by the ministry of angels and had not kept it. So at Bethesda an angel disturbed the pool, but it took One mightier than an angel to cure their willfulness.
At the pool of Siloam, on the other hand, the Lord lays no guilt at the door of the blind man. He says "Neither has this man sinned nor his parents." A nature is in question here. We cannot help being "born blind at our birth" it is completely beyond our control. That man, the man under judgment, must be ended by death. Ye must be born again.
b. The Man of power Christ gives a new nature to fallen man: The Lord had freed the prisoner in John 5 and opened the eyes of the blind in John 9 thus proving beyond doubt that He was Israel's God. In the face of such proofs the Jews rejected both His words and His works. Since Jesus knew what was in man John 2:25 He did these great signs on the Sabbath. When the Jews objected to this the Lord answered "My Father works until now, and I work" John 5:17. The Sabbath was the sign of God's rest in creation. But the Lord clearly indicated that sin had entered that creation, making a new work necessary. Since man could do nothing, the Lord of glory would do it all for him. He would give eternal life to man.
To give this life to man the Word of God must be applied in the power of the Spirit of God. John 3:5 makes it plain that man must be born of water the Word of God and the Spirit. The two pools in John's gospel and the signs the Lord performed at them typify the new birth. However God does not stop with the new birth. He uses John to show that just as the old nature man acquired at the fall is powerless and blind, so the new nature is one of power and vision. This new nature is symbolically represented to us in John's gospel by pictures of water in living energy, not only in contrast to the two pools for the water in a pool is stagnant but flowing out of them. Old things having passed away, all things have become new.
How the Pools Symbolically Change Their Character—Becoming a Fountain Rising Heavenward and Rivers to Refresh the Earth
To understand the transition which our caption indicates, we must group the rivers our subject in this chapter with the fountain of John 4. The rivers of living water do not stand by themselves, anymore than the fountain does.
a. A springing well for heaven: In the pool of Siloam all is grace. There the Lord is worshipped as the sent One of the Father. Now eternal life expresses itself in two ways service and worship, the figures of which are rivers and a fountain respectively. Rivers illustrate living water without in the world. In the chapter dealing with the Gentile sinner we have a fountain of living water within. But it does not stay within any more than the waters "in his belly" in John 8. They were many faceted, but the springing well worship in the power of the Holy Spirit springs heavenward, not over the earth like the rivers. There is but one object the worship of the Father and the Son. It is as though the waters of the pool of Siloam in the ninth chapter are energized to become the springing well in the fourth chapter. The link is that at the pool of Siloam the Lord is worshipped as Son of God; in John 4 the Father seeks such to worship Him.
b. Rivers to refresh the earth: The figure of a river is not difficult to understand. In nature a river is a flow of water rushing turbulently over the earth, and refreshing it. A river moves in channels, though these may change from time to time. It also has a source. Now let us apply this by going back to the beginning.
We are told that a river flowed out of Eden, to irrigate the garden where Adam was the figure of the man to come. From there it divided into four rivers. We find only one river connected with the Lord in John's gospel the Jordan. The river speaks of service in living energy and His service was undivided.
It was at His baptism in the river Jordan that His public ministry commenced. "Immediately the Spirit drives Him out to the wilderness. And He was in the wilderness forty days tempted by Satan" Mark 1:13. Our service, however, is expressed in many different channels of grace. That is why the Lord uses the figure of rivers, not a river, for us. "He who believes on Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" John 7:38. But to do that you must first thirst, and come to Him and drink. Nothing can go out of your belly that hasn't first gone in it. The great point is that the rivers, which are pictures of eternal life in mighty rushing energy flowing over this earth, are confined in channels, for eternal life is the possession of believers. We are the channels God uses in service to refresh this poor earth. Like the four main streams in Gen. 2:10 we all have one source of energy, and that is Christ.
However, while we can apply the figure of rivers as service for the Lord at the present time, we must not lose sight of the setting of the Lord's words. They were spoken at the feast of tabernacles John 7:2. This was the last of the seven feasts of the Lord Lev. 23 and prefigured Israel's blessing in the coming millennial day. In that future day Israel's impotency will be gone. The pool of the impotent man, so to speak, will be changed into the rivers of which the Lord spoke on that last day, the great day of the feast. Israel is impotent today because they do not thirst for Christ. They are a river bed without water. One day they will be rivers again to the whole earth. "Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power" Psa. 110:3. Then their belly will be filled and the rivers will go out to others. Now note how they go out over the world a fitting picture of the service an earthly people render to God. The rivers of eternal life, then, speak of the many forms which service to the Lord may take, a service which is confined to the earth, for a river does not rise above it.