Inexhaustible Resources in Christ — Alan Redpath

Ezekiel's River as a Picture of Christian Experience

Would you please open your Bible with me this morning at the prophecy of Ezekiel and the 47th chapter. Ezekiel 47, as we turn for our Lord's Day meditation this morning to the first 12 verses of this wonderful Old Testament picture of New Testament experience.

You are finding the place, will you allow me to say what a great joy it is to be able to be back here at Keswick this year, as never a year passes but day by day we pray for you and I'm so glad to be home again this week and to have the joy and immense privilege of ministry here at this great convention.

I can but hope that through the years when for a while at least God has called me to another land, that somehow what I say to you this week may be just sharing with you some of the things that the Lord has been seeking to teach me.

It needed a removal of 4 ,000 miles to teach some of the lessons in the master's school. I look back through the years I could say truly great has been thy faithfulness but alas how often great has been my stubbornness.

Self dies hard, doesn't it? This picture book, picture chapter rather, contains a wonderful Old Testament parable which points us to some of the great resources that are ours in Jesus Christ. And I thought that this morning, the first Lord's Day of this convention, we should consider together some of the fullness that God has for us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

I am sure that we are living in days which immediately precede the return of our Lord Jesus Christ in power and glory. The end is perhaps nearer than we think. Wherever you go today, in whatever land you may visit, you find tension, problems that are overwhelming, the sense of pressure and strain.

And alas, so often this spirit has crept into the life of Christian people and we discover missionaries on the field who are broken. We discover pastors in the homeland who somehow haven't got what it takes, with the result that so often after one term of service the missionary returns, perhaps never to go back again.

And the pastor moves from one pastorate to another with incredible speed, facing the pressures and finding themselves, ourselves, without spiritual resources adequate to face it all. Truly, Satan is crowding all pressure upon the church in these last days.

And it is quality and not quantity that is required. In Christian circles, a caliber and integrity of Christian life which alas is all too rare in these superficial streamlined days in which we live. I want to ask you therefore to consider with me this Old Testament picture because it describes to us so perfectly, I believe, what God has for us in Jesus Christ by his Spirit for days like these.

I am convinced that the message of the Keswick Convention, quite apart from being a partial answer to the need of the world, is the total answer to the need of all our hearts. I am sure today that we are not considering a convention which is merely a sideline or a side issue, but we are considering something which is the message, the strategic message of the church for the hour.

And if we haven't got that message burning like a fire in our hearts, we're going to collapse in these last days instead of standing our ground and fighting through to the end and remaining victors on the field.

The Biblical River and the Gift of the Holy Spirit

The Old Testament, indeed, the Word of God as a whole, is an Eastern book. And therefore its pictures are couched in the context of an Eastern setting. And that's why it is running right through the book you have the picture of a river.

The people of the land knew something about barrenness and desert. Often the heavens would be as dry and the earth as iron. And therefore running through the book you recall how frequently you have phrases such as, flood upon dry ground, I will pour water upon him that is first stream in the depth.

And the Prophet Isaiah says, in the wilderness shall waters break out. The psalmist says, there is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God. The godly man is like a tree planted by a river that bringeth forth his fruit in his season whose leaf never withers.

And the Lord Jesus takes up the theme when he says, if any man thirsts, let him come unto me and drink, and out of his inner man shall flow river of living water. And the Apostle John, given a vision of heaven, of the new Jerusalem, of glory that is yet to be, was shown that in that place there's no need of the sun, and there's no need of the moon, but there's a river.

A river as clear as crystal that flows out of the throne of God and out of the throne of the land. And so all through the book you've got the picture of a river. A river which makes all the difference between barrenness and fertility, between dryness and fruitfulness, between desert and garden, between a wilderness and that which blossoms with glory for the Lord Jesus Christ.

The picture of a river. And if we would understand the meaning of this, surely the writer of the fourth gospel, as he explains the statement of our Lord when he said, out of his inner man shall flow rivers of living water, said, this spake he of the Holy Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive.

For the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified. But our Lord has been glorified, and the great gift of the church is the Holy Ghost. And the one answer to your need and my need, and the whole family of God throughout the whole world, is the Holy Ghost.

O breath of life, come sweeping through us, revive thy church with life and power. O breath of life, come cleanse, renew us, equip thy church to meet this hour. I trust that is the cry of your heart today, as it is of mine.

Let me therefore ask you to look at this Old Testament parable of this New Testament truth of Christian experience, and see how perfectly it pictures to us that which God has for his people in Jesus Christ.

The Source of the River: Life From the Throne

In the first place, will you notice with me in this chapter, the essence of the river's power, the source of it. In the first verse, we are told that this river proceeded out from the threshold of the temple, out from the mercy seat, from the very throne of God.

And my beloved people, the life which God communicates to every one of his children at the moment of our new birth, has its source at the throne. A throne at which justice has been satisfied. A throne to which Jesus Christ has risen and ascended, and from which he has received the promise of the Holy Spirit to pour upon bankrupt, beaten, hopeless, defeated humanity.

And the life that Christ bestows upon us is throne life, dominion life, victory life, overcoming life, delivered life, resurrection life. This is the life that is imparted to the child of God at the moment of his new birth.

True, it is the purpose of God to reduce the flesh to nothing more than dust and ashes, but he doesn't want to leave us in the dust, all dusting. He wants to lift us up in the power of his resurrection, that we might be able to say with the Apostle Paul, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.

The life that Christ has given to you is sovereign life, victory life, overcoming life, and that life dwells in every one of us this morning, if we are believers. But not only the source of it, this chapter shows the cost of it.

For we are told in this same verse that the waters came down at the south side of the altar, of the altar. And the only way this life, this victory life, this overcoming life, can reach this world, and indeed can reach the child of God, is by way of the cross.

Dominion throne life does not come to the child of God by chance, by caprice. God has no favor. It does not come to us by the force of circumstances. It comes by virtue of the blood that has been shed, and the price that has been paid, and the atonement that has been made.

And because of full and free atonement has been made for all our sins, the man who by faith has claimed that forgiveness may step up to the throne of God and claim his right to the share that is his in the risen life of Jesus Christ.

This is a life that comes to us by covenant, by covenant which has been sealed by blood. And the essential outcome of Calvary is Pentecost. But may I remind you, my dear hearer today, that Calvary precedes Pentecost, not only historically, but experimentally.

And if I may avoid becoming involved in theological controversy, but indeed quoting words which were such a blessing to me when spoken from this very platform by Dr. Graham Scroggins, when he said, the great problem with the church today is that she's on the right side of Calvary and the wrong side of Pentecost.

The right side of forgiveness and the wrong side of power. The right side of peace, but the wrong side of deliverance. And there can be no Pentecost without a Calvary. This life of victory and power flows freely into the heart of the child of God, but it only comes to him by way of the cross.

And I could never have, at Pentecost, until I have accepted the principle of identification with Jesus Christ in death at Calvary. You see, beloved, the essence of sin is arrogance. The essence of salvation is submission.

And there is no experience of power in the life until I have come, bent and broken and humble, and at the end of myself, to find Jesus Christ in death at the cross and there to meet him, as a man crucified with him, to discover it is upon the crucified life that comes the fullness of the blessing of the gospel.

When I am saved, I am introduced to a life that is based upon the principle of total submission to the sovereignty of our wonderful Lord. The source of this life, the throne. The course of this life, the cross.

The Power of the River Comes From God Alone

The force of this life, will you notice that this story tells us? That the river had not gone more than one mile, indeed not as much as that, before it was so deep and so powerful that they were waters to swim in?

And would you observe, please, that there is no tributary from earth which has contributed to the impact of that river upon earth from the throne? No human river has added to its flow. Nothing that has had its source on earth has contributed to the power of that river.

Its strength and force were owed entirely to the fact that there was a constant, continuous flow of life-giving power from the throne and from the sanctuary. And there is nothing that I can do in life that I may add for my ministry or to equip me for my Christian service to that which God gives me in the Holy Spirit.

And perhaps part of the great trouble today in the world, in the church, why we don't really see a breaking out of the revival for which our hearts are longing, is that we have substituted machinery for the dynamics of the Holy Spirit.

I have never known an age in which the church is so equipped with things and so lacking in imbuement of power to move men to God. So much has been substituted programs and planning and equipment and gadgets for the mighty sovereign moving in of the power of God's Holy Spirit.

Across my desk I am sure every week there must come at least fifty advertisements of all kinds of material which are guaranteed to produce quick results at little sacrifice on my part and could take away from me the blood and the sweat and the toil and the tears and the travail of Christian ministry.

But I know that all these things are empty and futile and hopeless and the only secret of revival is when the church and the child of God get back to recognize that the source of all blessing is the throne and the cause of it is the cross and the power of it is in God's Holy Spirit and in His Holy Spirit alone.

The essence of the power of the river. And it is a great thing surely in human experience when a Christian comes to understand the tremendous, glorious, thrilling secret that every demand that can ever be made upon any of us as we live our lives within the center of the will of God in subjection to the sovereignty of Christ.

Every demand that can ever be made upon us is met by the Holy Spirit within us and He is adequate. My dear brother and sister if I hadn't discovered that secret I'd have been out of the ministry and in a mental institution with a breakdown long ago.

I'm sure I would. For it is the discovery that God's Holy Spirit is adequate for me in every situation as I live my life day by day in the will of God that changes the Christian life from drudgery to luxury.

To discover that every day there are adequate resources in God's Spirit dwelling within my life each day. The essence of the river's power. But would you notice with me in the second place in this chapter what I have called the effect of the river's flow.

Fertility and the Fruit of the Spirit

Surely when this happens in the life of a child of God it's evident by certain signs that follow. Certain unmistakable characteristics will mark out the life of a man who's experiencing the blessing of God and living day by day in victory.

Certainly there are. Here are some of them. I notice the first one is given to us in the seventh verse. The first effect of the flow of this river is what I would call fertility. Behold at the bank of the river there were very many trees on the one side and on the other.

And in the twelfth verse, whose leaves shall not fade neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary and the fruit thereof shall be for meat and the leaf thereof for medicine.

Oh what a lovely picture that is of what begins to happen in the life of the Christian who has discovered that his resources in the Holy Spirit are adequate. Do you notice that as the river pursues its path, its course, it has attracted growth to its bank?

There's a remarkable production of fruitfulness and fertility. Trees are there that have dug their roots deep into the riverbed and they're drawing constant strength from the waters of that river. You see, God's resources in Jesus Christ by His Spirit, they're not just a flash in the pan, not just an occasional emotional upheaval, not just a week at Keswick for a convention and then fifty-one weeks down in the dump.

That's not Christian living. It's a day by day increasing fertility and fruitfulness and growth for the moment that I discover in a crisis in my life that it is no longer I but Christ in me that matters.

The moment I begin to live on that principle, that crisis issues in a day by day experience and increasing experience of fertility and of fruitfulness. Let me say, to apply this very carefully this morning, the fruit of the Holy Spirit in life, beloved, is not success, does the world count it?

If that were true, some of the greatest saints in all the world have been total failures. It is not success, it is character. And the ninefold fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, 22, is no more and no less than the reproduction of the character of Jesus Christ through a life that has yielded to Him in obedience and in faith.

And very often I have noticed that that character is reproduced far more effectively in days of adversity than in days of prosperity. I have a calendar in my study, and I'm so grateful to the friends who send them over to America.

It's a calendar of Scotland. It has some of the lovely pictures of Scotland on it, and I was looking at one a little while ago. It has a picture of Glen Lyon there, and there was the River Lyon flowing through the Glen and tumbling over the rocks, just fresh and life-giving, so vital it seemed, so crystal clear.

And as I was thinking about this message, I thought to myself, what a perfect picture that is of Ezekiel's prophecy. And then I began to question. For I noticed that at the side of the river there were no leaves on the trees that were there.

It was taken in wintertime, apparently. And I began to ask myself, is this a real picture of Ezekiel, or isn't it? And I thought about it, and I looked at the twelfth verse in this chapter, where we read,.

And isn't it true that one of the evidences of spiritual life, and one of the marks of fertility, is that the man of God is reproducing the character of Jesus Christ, most of all in his spiritual wintertime?

You see, the fruit of the tree is for medicine, and the margin says, for bruises and for sores. And the older I get in life, the more I meet men of God who are bruised, and who are sore, and who have been wounded in the battle of life, and the ability to minister to such depends entirely whether I have learnt to triumph in my spiritual wintertime.

I wonder if you know anything about fertility in wintertime? Perhaps you're a young Christian, and perhaps you've thought that the Christian life is all sunshine. It's all springtime, and summertime, and blue skies, and everything so wonderful.

But maybe God has brought you through that and beyond it, and you've been going into autumn, where the leaves are being split, and into wintertime, where the life has gone underground, and everything seems barren.

And there seems to be no success, and no fruit, and no conversions, and no blessing. And God has brought you into the treasures of darkness. Do you know anything about that? What a wintertime our precious Lord has.

When Isaiah, speaking of him in the 50th chapter, says, The Lord hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to them that are weary. I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheek to them that plucked off the hair.

I hid not my face from shame and spitting. What a wintertime. But oh, what fertility. It's in Screwtape Letters, that masterpiece of C .S. Lewis's, where I read that Screwtape writes to his nephew and says, listen to this, Be not deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never more in danger than when a human being, no longer desiring but still intending to do his master's will, looks around upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he's been forsaken, and yet he goes on about it.

Do I know something of fertility in days like that? And look, an evidence that a man has entered into life in Christ in fullness. The effect of the river's flow will be healing. For verse 8 says, These waters go down to the desert and go into the sea, and the waters shall be healed.

As I go on in life, which passes so quickly, oh, how many estrangements I'm finding. Estrangements on the mission field, where the testimony of the missionary has been spoiled. Clash of temperaments, individualities, personalities, where a whole missionary testimony is going to pieces because missionaries are at Christ's service.

How true it is, not only on the mission field, but in the home church, where churches are split from top to bottom, often on very secondary issues of doctrine. How often the great hope of the church, the blessed hope, the return of our Lord, is made, instead of a centre of comfort, is made a centre of controversy.

And oh, how in many Christian homes, and who knows, perhaps with Kevin, where even in Christian homes, husband and wife are living, merely to keep up the appearance, where there's estrangement. Estrangement between parent and child, husband and wife, sweetheart and friend.

Oh, the unhappy estrangement. What's the answer to them? Brother, sister, listen, lift the barriers and let the river come in. Lift up the barriers, break them all down, take down the bars and make room.

For the river of God to flow in blessing and in victory through your home and through your mission station and through your church. Oh, that God would do this. The effect of the river's flow to heal. There's a balm in Gilead that makes the wounded whole.

There's a balm in Gilead that heals the sin-sick soul. Oh, that you and I today would just humble ourselves that much, to stop vindicating our own ways, to stop demanding that we are proved right and everybody else is proved wrong, to stop insisting upon our rights because we have no right except to do the will of God, and just lie today on our faces broken at Calvary that the Holy Spirit may move right in and heal.

Life Wherever the Spirit Flows

And the effect of the river's flow is life. For verse 9 says, everything shall live whither the river cometh. Oh, I know the chapter speaks of a great multitude of fish, and people have often used this to indicate that where the Holy Spirit is, you will get multitudes of conversions.

You may, you may not. Jeremiah didn't have many. Isaiah didn't have many. Our Lord, in His ministry, didn't have many. It may be that way, but it may not. But this much I tell you. When the bars are down and the Holy Ghost moves in, then wherever He moves, there's life.

And the prayer life that has gone to pieces becomes alive again. And the book that has gone dead takes life. And the devotional life of the child of God, which has just fallen apart because He's been so busy, begins to live.

And the Bible takes on a new meaning, meaning wherever the Spirit comes, there's life. And where there's been the marks of death and a cold, dead, dull testimony, when the river begins to flow, all the life that's visible in the moment.

The essence of the river's power, the effect of the river's flow, healing, life, fertility, the essence of that river's power, the throne, the cross, and all the force of it in itself, not because of anything we can ask.

Growing Into the Depth of God's Blessing

But one more brief word in conclusion. Somebody would say to me today, this is wonderful, but oh, how do I get there? Let me conclude by a word concerning the experience of the river's depth. Three times in this chapter I read that Ezekiel said, a man came alongside me with a measuring line in his hand, and he measured the waters, and he brought me through until there came a moment when he couldn't bring him through.

He never got through. He just arrived into such abundance of blessing that there was no way through. It swamped him. First the man with the measuring line came, and the waters were up to the ankle. Kezek stands for abundant life.

Kezek stands for life in Canaan. Kezek stands for life in Romans 8. Kezek stands for victory because the New Testament stands for victory. And a man whose only ankle deep in the water is giving a great big display of himself.

He's out of Egypt, but he's in the wilderness. He's never got into the life of victory and deliverance. He knows something of forgiveness of sins, but nothing of deliverance from the principle of sin.

He knows something of what it means to be on the right side of pardon, but not the right side of power. He's just ankle deep. He's a Kahn or Christian, full of self, always sensitive and touchy, no mark of growth, just living in an awful spiritual business, wilderness.

Brother, sister, let me ask you today, oh, that I may just be out of the picture in all of this, but the man with the line of his hand might stand right alongside you now and measure. Where are you? Ankle deep, or has he brought you through?

Then, he's down to his knees. He took me through and the waters were up to the knees. And may I suggest to you, this picture's a man who's discovered that in himself he's bankrupt and he's started a life of pleading with God.

He's got his knees into the water. This man is beginning to pray. This man's beginning to hunger. This man's dissatisfied with all that he can ever be apart from grace. He's been ankle deep in the river for years, and he's sick of his testimony and tired of his witness, and he knows he just can't go on any longer like this, so he's on his knees.

It's a great thing when a God gets a Christian there, not as a form of quiet time, but when he's really on his knees. The eighth virgin, that great prince of preachers, says that prayer, prayer is the autograph of the Holy Spirit upon the regenerate heart.

And when Paul sent, when rather Ananias was sent by the Lord to speak to the apostle Paul, and when he protested and said, oh, but Lord, I'm afraid of him. The Lord Jesus said, you don't need to be afraid of him, Ananias.

Behold, he prayeth. Self-righteous, bigoted, proud, religious Pharisee. He's broken. He's on his knees. He's praying. He's pleading with God. You'd only be afraid of a man like that. It's a tremendous thing, beloved, when the Lord, as the outcome of meditation upon these truths, creates in our hearts a deep hunger for Himself.

My good friend, Dr. Tozer, of whom I'm sure you've all heard, and many of whose articles you've read, wrote just recently in his book, The Pursuit of God, and said this, everything these days is made to center upon the initial act of accepting Christ.

We are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We are snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him, we no more seek for Him. This is set before us as the last word of theology and orthodoxy, and the heart theology of a great army of fragrant saints is rejected in favor of a smug interpretation of Scripture, which would have sounded strange to Augustine and Rutherford and David Braynard.

Oh, that the language of the hymn might come to us afresh today, I hunger and I thirst, Jesu my manna be, ye living waters burst out of the rock for me. Remember, brother and sister, if you're at Keswick today and you're hungry, you're healthy.

Hunger is a sign of health, and if you've no hunger for God, you're sick. May God create in all of us an appetite which only Jesus Christ can satisfy. Down, Christian, down upon your knees, if you want the blessing that God would give you.

Strength Through Dependence on the Holy Spirit

Then I find that He brought me through, and the waters are up to the loin. Doesn't that picture strength, the place of strength and the place of authority? The man who's discovered the secret that they that wait upon the Lord exchange their strength for Him.

The man who uses the language of the Apostle Paul when he says in Colossians 1 .29, I labor, striving according to His working which worketh in me mightily. He takes the measure along thine, and He brought me through.

The two greatest lessons that I have learned as a Christian, and I'm slow in learning, are that God expects nothing, nothing at all from Alan Redpath except total failure. But He's given me the Holy Spirit that I need not fail, that I need not fail.

And oh, the blessedness of that life where it is no more my struggle and my effort but His mighty power. And lastly, in verse 5, we're told again that I found there were waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over.

Now look, here's the man out of his depth, and he's swimming. And when a man is swimming, he's out of sight. You can only see his head. And the head of every man is Christ. And here's a man brought to a place where there's none of self and all of Christ.

Where self is forgotten, unrecognized, and unseen. And in that man's life, it is Jesus only. The man with the measuring line. And he stands by us all in this tent this morning. And listen, here's a river less than a mile from its source, and the man is out of its depth.

May I ask you very lovingly, how many miles are you from the source of your Christian experience when that glad day that Jesus washed your sins away, but are you only ankle deep? Or are you up to your knees?

Or are you up to the lines? Or are there waters to swim in? I believe there's nothing so needed this day at this convention than there could be in your heart a new spirit of expectancy. That God will meet us in a new way in this place.

Expecting Revival and the Fullness of Christ

D .L. Moody once said in Glasgow, One day in New York, oh, what a day! I cannot describe it. I seldom refer to it. It's almost too sacred an experience to name. I could only say God revealed Himself to me.

I had such an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay at. I went to preaching again. The sermons were no different. I didn't present any new truth, yet hundreds were converted. And I would not be placed back where I was before that blessed experience if you would give me all Glasgow.

David Brainerd in the shade and cool wind, wet with sweat as he prayed, drawn out much for the world, grasping God for multitudes of souls, so preached that scores of stoic, hard-hearted Indian people were bowed down like grass before a site.

Oh, Lord, do it again. And do it at Keswick. May I just give you, as I conclude, this simple illustration. Years ago, I was taking a mission in the lovely city of Dundee, and I walked alongside the River Tay with a good friend of mine who was Baptist minister there at the time.

As we walked along the riverbank, we came to that great railway bridge that spans that enormous river. I don't know how long the bridge is, probably over a mile long. And underneath it we saw great big concrete things sticking out of the water, all marked with seaweed and dirt and slime and filth and shells, just the relics of a disaster that had occurred there seventy years ago.

When an express train going over that river in a terrible storm, the bridge broke and the train collapsed and went in, and hundreds of lives were lost. And as we walked along that day, there were all the evidences of that disaster.

A few hours later, I came back alone, meditating upon an evening service. As I walked, I came to the same place, and I rubbed my eyes to discover what had happened, because there were no marks of the disaster.

It had all gone. The marks of filth and dirt were all departed, and all I saw was this lovely, beautiful railway bridge. Of course, in a flash of a second, I knew. You know what had happened? Of course you know.

The tide had come in. That's all. The tide had come in, and all that ugliness of that disaster had disappeared under the flow of God's river that had flowed there, and all we could see was the beauty of that new bridge.

Listen, brother, my last word to you today is that, oh, may you not leave Keswick before we enter into what God has for you. I believe that God, in His mercy and love, and in His purpose for all of us in Jesus Christ by the Holy Ghost, wants to place in the very situation in your life where there has been the mark of disaster, and all the marks of breakdown and failure, He wants to send the tides from heaven from the throne in glory, by the cross, into your heart and into your life, and out through it in healing and blessing to others.

He wants to do that till there's no marks of that former disaster, and it's all submerged beneath the tide of His fullness, and in the very place of your failure to send you back to conquer in the power of a risen Lord.

Oh, may that be the blessing that God may give you in Jesus Christ to all of us, the fullness of life by His Spirit, and you needn't wait till next Sunday. You can come with bankruptcy and emptiness of heart and hunger of soul, for the Lord Jesus said, blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall.