Transcription of the Video: Living Water

Ray Vander Laan: The ancient land of Israel is a testimony, an evidence of the greatness of what God did in that country, a testimony to the truth of the words that we find in the pages of the Bible. 

It's like a jungle in here. It's gorgeous. 

Look at the desert up there. Here's your picture, John. Look at this. Look at the wilderness up above you - 100 feet away, nothing. 

You talk about water being life. Look at that. Look at the water coming down. That's incredible. 

Being in the wilderness makes water very special. It helps one understand why God was seen as the one who brought water. The Bible tells the story of King David wandering around in the wilderness of Israel, running away, running for his life from King Saul, and then he came to an oasis - one of those beautiful spots in that dry, almost dead wilderness where life is possible because there's water. And water is life. 

What an incredibly beautiful place here this morning. It's almost like an amphitheater. You look around and up above, not 100 feet from us, you're right out in the wilderness. It's incredible. We came up here this morning and as you enter this canyon, this wadi here in the Judea wilderness, absolute barrenness. Remember that dust by the Dead Sea and the rocks and just a broom tree here and there, and it's almost like the country is totally barren. Then suddenly, you come to this place in the jungle and the reeds and the water and the sounds of animals and the ibex running around. It's really a glorious, glorious place. 

To the east of us is the Dead Sea - maybe a mile. We're in the Judean Wilderness. To the west of us, the Judean Mountains not all that far. In fact, if you go 10 of 15 miles, you'll be where they're actually doing farming and people are raising crops. It's hard to imagine. And we're in one of those wadi canyons that comes down out of those mountains and runs to the Dead Sea. 

Somewhere just up above us here, a little bit further to the west, there's a spring that runs right out of the rock. A stream of water runs a short distance and then comes falling down these stones and makes its way here down the canyon, where eventually it's trapped of course and used. You wouldn't waste good water. But that's the wadi or the oasis of En Gedi. 

There are a couple of Bible contexts in which this is important. David has been hiding out from Saul. We spoke of that at Masada, that fortress. He's there in the desert, going probably from cave to cave and fortress to fortress, and it seems like every place he goes, somehow Saul finds out. So David has to move. And he's been living there maybe for months in the barrenness of that desert with those men that he had surrounded himself with and trying to find his escape from Saul, wondering how God was going to finally give him the Kingdom that he'd been promised. You can almost feel that. I want you to feel the heat of Masada and the burning of the sun and the dust that we felt yesterday in the Negev.

Finally, the Bible says David came here to the strongholds of En Gedi. I hope you can feel the impact that this must have had on them just to feel this refreshing coolness and water in the shade of the jungle. That's just an amazing thing. 

Now it's based on that kind of experience that the Bible begins to talk about water, Psalms in particular. Maybe David was reflecting back on this place or at least some place like it. The first one comes from Psalm 63 [1]. "Oh God, you are my God. Earnestly, I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water. And David thinks, in a way, that's what life is like. It's just dry. It's barren. Sometimes there's just not much by way of refreshment and encouragement. And he said, "I just long for you like I long for this place when I'm out living in the desert."

And in Psalm 42 [1 & 2], it's the same concept. He says, "As the deer pants for streams of water, my soul pants for you oh God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?"

After David was here for a while, Saul comes up the canyon. David and his men are hiding in a cave. We saw caves in the side of the walls of the rock. David and his men are in there and Saul steps away from his army and goes in to use the restroom, into the cave where David is. David's men of course think, "Hey, here's our chance. We've got this guy alone in this cave. Let's end it. Let's get this kingdom." 

I think of the parallel between David and Jesus at that point. David says, "No, no. That's not the battle plan. It's not the sword. I'm not going to do it that way. Let's, instead, do it God's way."

There's a second concept I'd like to suggest also in the Bible. There are a number of different kinds of water that the Bible refers to. This kind of water like you see here running down the waterfall, down the face of the cliff from the spring, that kind of water is called living water. And it's living water not so much that it gives life, but it's living in the sense that it's fresh, it's clean, it's always pure, it doesn't get stagnant or stale. It's just life giving. In that sense, it's called living water, whereas the water in those cisterns we've been seeing on Masada, at Lachish, at Azekah. That kind of water would really be referred to as cistern water or dead water. That of course, can get stagnant. It can have things floating in it, and it's just not always fresh. 

There are two ways that that became significant in its implication for Jewish people. The first was, they developed a tradition that you need to wash yourself. You need to be pure when you go to see God. We'll look at mikvahs when we go to Qumran and when we're in Jerusalem. And they said for a mikvah to be appropriate for cleansing, it has to have living water in it. That is water that's been untouched by humans. It has to be water that flows in there naturally, either from the rain or from a source of water something like this. So in a sense, living water communicates also the idea of purity. 

In the Gospel of John, Jesus meets a woman at a well. And in that passage in the Gospel of John 4 [10-15], Jesus asks the woman for a drink. The woman was surprised because she was a Samaritan (kind of unclean). Jesus answered, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given your living water."

"Sir," the woman said, "You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself?"

Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. The water I have to offer is pure, it's clean, it brings purity, and it's always fresh. It's always new." I like the idea, too, that that water then becomes a spring inside of you so that you actually become a source of the same kind of life to other people. 

The last idea that I think of when I think of this kind of water is, again, that contrast between living water (so fresh and so pure) and cistern water. Imagine that cistern water with dust and dirt in it and maybe even animals floating on the surface of it that died getting in it. 

This is what Jeremiah says. He said, "My people have committed two sins. They have forsaken me, the spring of living water." [Jeremiah 2:13]

Now imagine, you're David. You came up this canyon. You've been out in the desert for months. You're hot. Your water has been water that's been drawn out of cisterns and pools in the wadi, and it's been warm and it's been dirty. You come walking up here in the sunlight, you hear the water and you get to the water, put your face in it, and you drink. Then for some reason, you just walk away from it. You almost laugh. Who would forsake the spring of water? But that's not the worst.

Jeremiah continues. "They've forsaken me, the spring of living water and have dug their own cisterns - broken cisterns that cannot hold water."

Now a cistern then would represent what you create with your own hands versus God's water out of the rock. And Jeremiah says, "My people have worshiped idols. They've left me, and this is what I'm like in a dry and very tired countryside, a dry and weary land. But they've gone and they've dug these cisterns that won't even hold water, and they're trying to satisfy their thirst with an idol."

It seems to me that what this place says is that life, in a lot of ways, is like the wilderness. We're called to be there. We've got a job to do. We've got people we need to interact with. We have a culture that we need to impact. But that can be a dry and tiring thing. I'm sure many of you have felt the tiredness of trying to serve the Lord and giving of yourself and giving of yourself to other people until it hurts. 

It's times like that, it seems to me, that this place says you've got to have a place like this in your life. You need somewhere where you can come away from the heat, away from the giving, away from the dryness of just being empty after a while - being a parent, being a student, being a business person, being a teacher, being a lawyer - and being able to come here and in the quiet, taste God. 

If we're going to leave this experience that we've had in this country and really impact the culture, really make a difference, we're all going to have to devote ourselves to spend some time at En Gedi on a regular basis, whether that's daily prayer time, whether that's time spent alone with the Lord or in reading of his Word. But just that time where in the middle of feeling dry, in the middle of feeling weary, instead of sitting under the broom tree, to come here. I think without that, it would be very difficult to go on. 

Added to that, it seems to me the image is when I come here and I drink and I drink and I drink, and I'm full, and I'm refreshed, and I lay in the water and I'm cool and I feel alive again, God now becomes the same within me for you. And for each of you, for each other. 

So I think we need to encourage ourselves today that the place we're going to get this strength-- I know several of you have commented on what a big job God gives to people, what an enormous responsibility being a Christian in culture really is. But the source comes from the living water. 

Maybe the reverse side of that coin is this. When you get involved in a task, especially a talented group like you are, there's a tendency to trust in your own strength. I know that's true for me. That's what you call cistern digging. Cistern digging says, "I'm going to go out into life and I'm going to find the life I need, the energy I need, the desire I need, the courage I need. Whatever it is I need, I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to find it in my talents. I'm going to find it in my hard work. I'm going to find it in my success or even in my friends." 

And God says, "Idols and cisterns fail always." And if I trust my own strength, I will never be living water to anybody else. 

But this, the spring of living water never fails. Imagine, this spring was running here like this-- it maybe looked a little different-- but running here like this 3,000 years ago when David came here. This doesn't fail. It's always there. It seems to me the source of our strength is the water of life. And we come here and we're filled and now we have something for others, and we come back again and we're filled again, and we go back again, and we become effective. And we don't dig cisterns. 

Does anyone have a comment?

Participant 1: Ray, I think what makes this water so special here other than its just raw beauty is the fact that is contrasted with the desert. When you're out in the desert, you have to come back to a place this and get refreshed. I love your analogy of this being fed by God. You think sometimes when people become critical of worship and communion with other believers, it's because they haven't been out in the desert enough to get thirsty. I'm always struck by the more obedient to God and doing God's work, the more beautiful it is to come away and spend time with God and spend time with God's people. And when you're not doing the work that God called, or to use your word, not been out in the desert sometimes you just take for granted and it's not so special to be together and to come to a beautiful place like this.

Ray Vander Laan: I think sometimes culture can be so attractive and so pleasant and so pleasurable that we fail to realize that even things that are comfortable and enjoyable can be like a desert if you leave God out. Because if God is like water, then what makes something desert is that there is no water. So you can even take the most wonderful thing our culture has to offer - wealth and power and luxury and leisure and vacation and all those good kinds of things and you leave God out, you've got a desert. And I wonder sometimes whether we really realize how incredibly dry and barren our culture is. 

So I can come here to the spring and I can drink and I can have whole buckets full of water, but unless I realize that out there, there are people dying of thirst because God is not a part of their life and God is not a part of their existence and God is not a part of their everyday experience, I'll have no reason to bring the water of life to anybody else, and that's also true for me. I need to realize that often I feel very much out of touch with God, and I need to realize how dry and barren that is. It's almost like a person is so thirsty that they're almost delirious and don't even realize that they're thirsty. 

I think we need to look at our culture, we need to look at ourselves and students in our schools and even our own children as being thirsty. And here's the answer. 

Participant 2: For me, my family can be an oasis or an En Gedi. My wife, for me, is an oasis that God puts in my life, and I need to be that for my kids and for my wife. It seems like that's one oasis that God uses for all of us.

Participant 3: I think that's a good barometer of whether we're drinking enough from the living water is what we're putting into the relationships that we have with other people. Are we being stressed and being the heat and being the dryness in those relationships or are we being the oasis for the other people?

Participant 4: Ray, I think the one other image of Israel is just out of this valley, we have the Dead Sea. It's easy for us to compare the desert to the living water, but a couple of us were out floating in the Dead Sea last night. From a distance that looks like it's living water. It looks like it's something that would be refreshing. You get down into it, and it's awful. And I think the idea of this looking good and being good and that looking good from a distance and as you get close to it, it's very, very bad. And again, for us as Christians to be able to relate to what is the living water and not what just looks like it from a distance and be able to tell the difference.

Ray Vander Laan: Amen. I'd be tempted to stay here. I don't want to go back to the Negev. I don't want to go back and hike in the Jericho Road. I want to stay right here with an easy chair. But I think there's also the idea that when you taste the water, now you can go on and face the world that so desperately needs the water we have to offer. Is there anyone else with a comment?

Participant 5: A lot of teens today are in the desert and they're looking for the living water, but they can't find it. So they turn to the Dead Sea, which to them is like drugs, beer, alcohol, and abortion. I think we really have to be and show them the living water of God to help them get out of the desert.

Ray Vander Laan: Amen.