A well of living waters

In Exodus 17, when Moses took his rod and smote the rock and out of it came the living water that saved the Israelites dying of thirst, he was a fulfilling a prophetic picture, or what’s called a ‘type.’ The incident foretold, or prefigured, the broken humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ at Calvary out of which life was going to come.

“But when they wanted water again and Moses went back to that rock, he couldn’t go into the Promised Land because he’d smote the rock a second time,” explains Jordan. “Isn’t that a strange thing to keep a guy like Moses out of the Promised Land?! I mean, wouldn’t you think he would have needed to commit some big terrible sin to be forbidden entrance into the Promised Land?! He’d already been told to hit the rock once. What he did the second time was he violated the type. He contradicted the type.

“What he did when he smote it, when he should have spoken to it only—Christ is smitten once for all. The second time, as Hebrews 6 says, ‘If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.’ God said those people can’t be renewed to repentance.

“What Moses did was make the mistake of crucifying the Lord again and just violating that type, that picture, cost him entrance into the Promised Land. I mean, this stuff can be serious, folks.”

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John 7: 38 says, "He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."

The two symbols of the Holy Spirit are living water and a river. “This is because you can have water in different forms; you can have water as dew, as rain. Here it’s living water in the sense it is flowing,” says Jordan.

Water represents the effectiveness and efficiency of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The living water represents the life that’s in Christ, the life the Messiah will provide.

Jeremiah 2:13 says, “For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.”

“The fountain is sort of like an artesian well; it flows naturally, you can’t stop it,” says Jordan. “A cistern is a bucket you hold water in, but their bucket’s got a hole in it. They’ve forsaken God and they got buckets that can’t hold water. That’s a description of the spiritual condition the nation is in. But who is the fountain of living water? He is; He’s the source.

“What Christ is doing when He talks about out of His belly will flow living water, He’s literally reaching back into Jeremiah, taking a symbol, an emblem of the Holy Spirit’s ministry in Israel under the new covenant right out of the book of Jeremiah, describing what they’ve forsaken."

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Jeremiah 17:13, “O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters.”

“He’s the starting point out of which this water is going to flow and when that kind of water flows, it becomes a flood,” says Jordan. “A flood is an excessive amount. It’s beyond expectation. And it goes out to bless the earth, to bless those who receive it.”

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Jordan says he once wrote down every verse in the Bible about rivers. Rivers start out in Genesis 2. There are four named in Eden and each one has a specific relationship to the land.

“The better known rivers include the Nile, the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Jordan. There’s the rivers of Babylon and Chadar and every river in the Bible has something specific, something special connected with it. There’s a spiritual identity connected with it.”

Rivers are used to represent spiritual truth. Psalm 1 says the godly man “shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”

Jordan says, “One of the things a river does in the Bible is help a godly man produce fruit. Well, isn’t that exactly what the Holy Spirit does? He produces the fruit of the spirit.”

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Rivers are often used in Scripture to demonstrate the mission of the Spirit of God. Isaiah 48:18 says, “O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea:”

Jordan says, “The peace of God comes from your faith wresting in the truth of God’s Word, which then allows the Spirit of God to produce the fruit of love, joy, peace.

Isaiah 41:17-18 says, “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the LORD will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them.
[18] I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.”

Jordan says, “He’s going to quench the thirst of the thirsty, meaning He’s going to satisfy the hearts of Israel. You see the descriptions there that kind of match John 7?

 “Look at Psalm 36:8 and Psalm 42:1. The blessings God gave Israel will flow Israel out to the needy and it will be like a river and it will be like when someone comes and drinks of the river and is satisfied and finds peace. You can go on and on and on with it.”

(Editor’s Note: To be continued . . . )