Rev. 21:6; 22:17.
IN Rev. 21:6, we read, “I will give to him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.” And in the 17th verse of the next chapter we read again, “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” These are the two last gospel statements in Scripture. Let me ask you for a few minutes, to give your undivided attention to them, dear reader.
In the first of these Scriptures, God announces Himself as a giver. He never takes away. He delights in giving, and here He offers a gift worthy of Himself. He says, “I will give to him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.”
Mark these three words, “I will give.”
A gift is something quite independent of the one who receives. All he has to do is to take what is given, and enjoy it.
Nothing delights a giver more than to see the one he wishes to benefit rejoicing in his gift, not questioning or measuring the love that bestows it. It is not to supply a superficial need God gives. Ah! no. We were lost, dead in sins; and that we might have life, God gave us what was more precious to Him than anything else. Having one Son, His well-beloved, He gave Him to die; He spared not His own Son for us, the One who was equal with God came to lay down His life.
Thus we see the preciousness of the gift and the depth of the love of the giver.
You could not take, unless God gave; but when He gives, you are bound to take. And the Lord Jesus gives us, poor lost sinners, the very life He himself possesses, He says, “Because I live ye shall live also.” Christ, the Life eternal, that was with the Father from everlasting, was manifested in this world for us. But for Him man never could have known what God the Father is.
Christ was the perfect expression to man of God, by Him was seen the great love of God, that God is Love.
By Him also was made known that God is Light, that there is no darkness at all in Him.
This, then, is the gift that God announces in this Scripture He will bestow. The fountain is Christ the Lord, through whom the water of life eternal truly flows to lost, ruined, thirsty man.
God gives to us individually. He says, “I will give to him that is athirst.” As elsewhere, our Lord says, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink,” and “him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.”
So here, the gift of eternal life is individually bestowed, the water of the fountain of life is offered separately to every lost soul. And why is this? Ah! there is a deep reason. It is individually we have to do with God in time, it is individually we shall all appear before Him in eternity. And so I must personally accept, or personally deliberately reject, the salvation He offers through Christ. He accounts me as responsible before Him. Only those who have done so can tell how blessed it is to drink of the fountain of life, to accept God’s gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, in simple believing faith. But oh! what will the rejecter of God’s now freely offered gift have to say for himself, when he appears face-to-face in the day of judgment before the One whose salvation he has neglected and despised?
And as the life God gives through Christ is life in His presence forever to the believer, so the complete opposite must result to those who believe not. To hold otherwise, to try to persuade oneself this is not the case, as alas! so many do in this day, is completely to lay aside the plain declaration of the revelation of God, and to yield oneself to the power of the evil one.
It is futile, indeed, to endeavor to measure and estimate the value and benefit of the work of the cross. This can never be done, because the One who suffered there was divine; the doom it saves from, therefore, must be as endless as the heaven, which the work of the cross leads into.
It is to those who are athirst God gives. To be lost is the only recommendation the sinner needs with the Saviour. “Not those who are whole need a physician, but those who are sick.” The Lord Jesus “came not to call the righteous, but sinners” —came to seek and save the lost. Oh! the blessedness of experiencing the thirst that none but God can satisfy. Many indeed feel thirst, but go elsewhere than to the fountain of life to quench their thirst.
“Whom have we Lord, but thee,
Soul thirst to satisfy?
Exhaustless spring! The waters free,
All other streams are dry.”
Finally, the gift is free: both these Scriptures close with the same word FREELY. “God always gives as God,” without money and without price; every one who thirsts is called to come to the waters; by grace are we saved through faith, and even this is not of ourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast. God does not bargain with man about the gift of eternal life. He gives it freely to him: greater and lesser debtors, each and all, having nothing to pay or to give, are frankly forgiven by Him.
It is this that magnifies the great grace of the Lord, and shows His love divine, fathomless and without motive, to the lost sinner.
The sinner must be nothing, that the Saviour may be everything. And never, during any after period of his time-state down here, or of his eternal existence hereafter, does man bring more glory to the Lord, than when he comes in believing faith, a weary, heavy-laden, sin-sick, lost soul, to the One who is a just God and a Saviour.
The other Scripture we are thinking of, is the seventeenth verse of the next chapter, “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” The Book of the Revelation is by no means gospel in its character. But God delights in salvation: and in these, the last closing words in the last book of His revealed mind, He, as it were, turns aside and utters, once for all, the last divine command and invitation from God to man, “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” The word “whosoever” shows all are included.
The remedy is equal to the disease; the supply is equal to the need. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God; the whole world is brought in guilty before him; every lost son of Adam needs atonement for the soul, redemption for the body, and to be reconciled to God. And so the word is “whosoever will,” “whosoever” leaves me without excuse.
Mark the three next words which follow: “whosoever will, let him take.” This is man’s side of the question of salvation, his responsibility.
In the first Scripture we were considering God’s boundless grace when He says, “I will give:” but here He addresses man as responsible and says, “let him take.” I am responsible before the Lord to take the salvation He so freely gives. What a thought! And it is this truth which will constitute the unending misery, the accusing conscience of those of whom our Lord said, “Ye will not come to me that ye might have life” (John 5:40).
“Because I have called and ye refused, I have stretched out my hand and no man regarded, I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh; then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me.
But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil” (Prov. 1:33).
Christ “gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:6), not one was left out; for “the Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Now God beseeches you to be reconciled to Him. What a thought! God beseeches you. But he will not always do so.
The day will come when He will no longer charge you to take the water of life, when it will be no longer optional with you to do so.
You are free to take it now, then you will not be.
A day will come when this earth beneath our feet—rich and beautiful as it now is, and even then will be—and the heavens above our heads, will pass away with a great noise from the presence of one who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and in whose sight the heavens are not clean (Job 15:15).
The Apostle John of this says, “I saw a great white throne” (the throne showing judgment, long delayed but come at last, white, purity), “and Him that sat on it, from whose face the heaven and the earth fled away, and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them, and they were judged, every man according to their works, and death and hell were cast into the lake of fire this is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:11-15). This is the last scene in which this earth, and those who are on it will take part. This will close God’s forbearance with the earth. It was ruined by departure from Him; and though long ages have rolled by of His love and grace since then, yet now when he sits in judgment, both heaven and earth flee away from before His face, all evil is judged finally, and forever.
See, oh! unconverted soul, the end of this world which you now allow to possess your heart. But what of those who are on it?
The whole lost human race from Adam, great and small, then appear before the Judge.
How do they appear? As dead, dead though out of their graves. Oh! awful, unspeakably fearful reality, “I saw the dead stand before God” (dead though in His presence), “and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books,” still dead though in judgment.
Then every action and event of the past life of each will reappear and be judged. Oh! how will every thought of your heart, and action of your life stand the burning light of that great white throne. Men speak of events as past and gone. There is nothing past and gone. All will then reappear. Long, long before the blessed and holy resurrection of those who are Christ’s has taken place (Rev. 21:6).
You need never be amongst that number who stand before the great white throne in that day. For in the very same Scripture which records these fearful coming realities, God says to you today, “I will give to him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.” Oh! take His gift, and take it now. For the time is short, the time is at hand when the Lord will come quickly, and then the day of grace will be over, and the unjust and the righteous, the filthy and the holy, will be let remain as they are (Rev. 22:10, 11, 12).
Therefore heaven and earth are called to record against you this day, that life and death, blessing and cursing, have been set before you, therefore CHOOSE LIFE (Deut. 30:19). “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” Let him drinks and live forever.
R. B.
FRIEND, WHERE WILL YOU SPEND
ETERNITY?