Waters issued out from under the threshold of the house ... EZEKIEL
xlvii. 1.
Unlike most great cities, Jerusalem was not situated on a great river.
True, the inconsiderable waters of Siloam--'which flow softly' because
they were so inconsiderable--rose from a crevice in the Temple rock, and
beneath that rock stretched the valley of the Kedron, dry and bleached
in the summer, and a rainy torrent during the rainy seasons; but that
was all. So, many of the prophets, who looked forward to the better
times to come, laid their finger upon that one defect, and prophesied
that it should be cured. Thus we read in a psalm: 'There is a river,
the divisions whereof make glad the City of our God.' Faith saw what
sense saw not. Again, Isaiah says: 'There'--that is to say, in the new
Jerusalem--'the glorious Lord shall be unto us a place of broad rivers
and streams.' And so, this prophet casts his anticipations of the
abundant outpouring of blessing that shall come when God in very deed
dwells among men, into this figure of a river pouring out from beneath
the Temple-door, and spreading life and fertility wherever its waters
come. I need not remind you how our Lord Himself uses the same figure,
and modifies it, by saying that whosoever believeth on Him, 'out of him
shall flow rivers of living waters'; or how, in the very last words of
the Apocalyptic seer, we hear again the music of the ripples of the
great stream, 'the river of the water of life proceeding out of the
Throne of God and of the Lamb.' So then, all through Scripture, we may
say that we hear the murmur of the stream, and can catch the line of
verdure upon its banks. My object now is not only to deal with the words
that I have read as a starting-point, but rather to seek to draw out the
wonderful significance of this great prophetic parable.