“The Soft Peaceful Waters of Shiloah“
The Soft Peaceful Waters of Shiloah
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
December 18, 1955
Brother McAfee kind of left me dangling here. He said there would be selections by the choir, the pastor would speak also. He put me in a footnote there, he didn’t mean to do it, but I want to mention that I shall give tonight the second of three sermons on loving our Lord Jesus Christ.
Last week I talked about whether you could know or not that you loved Him. This week, tonight, the benefits of loving Christ, and next Sunday night, Christmas Sunday night, the assurance that we love him. Now, Christmas Sunday morning, I shall bring a Christmas message, though Christmas messages with me don’t differ greatly from any other message, because I build all of my messages upon the fact that He has come.
Then also I want to emphasize what Brother McAfee has emphasized, that Sunday night, or Wednesday night at 7.30, there will be studies in Christian doctrine. We will be beginning our studies on the Trinity. I hope that you can come in spite of the fact the night it is, in the middle, just before Christmas. I hope you can be here because this is most important teaching for Christians. We ought to know what we believe about the Trinity. We’ll begin, we can’t close, we can’t finish it next Wednesday, but we’ll begin.
Then the New Year’s Eve meeting begins at 10 o’clock and continues two hours, and the latter half hour will be taken over with the Lord’s Supper. I hope everybody will plan to be here instead of somewhere else. We are Christians, and we ought to celebrate like Christians, not like the world, minus the liquor. But be here, if you can at all. 10 o’clock, New Year’s Eve.
Now, this morning, in the book of Isaiah, the 8th chapter, verses 5 to 8, the Lord spake also again unto me, saying, forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in and rejoice in Rezin and Remaliah’s son. Now therefore, behold, the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong in many, even the king of Assyria, and all his glory. And he shall come up over all his channels and go over all his banks. And he shall pass through Judah, he shall overflow, and go over, he shall reach even to the neck, and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel.
Verse 6 is the one that I have particularly in mind. This people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly and rejoice in Rezin and Remaliah’s son. I want to talk a little about the waters of Shiloah that go softly. This stream, Shiloah, sometimes called Siloam, is said to be the only perennial one in the city of Jerusalem. That is, it is the only one that didn’t go dry. And it seemed to me that it’s exquisitely named as if God Himself must have named it, because this Shiloah means tranquility, rest, and peace. The waters of Shiloah are the waters of tranquility, the peaceful waters that go softly.
Now, this that I shall say for the next five minutes will be very familiar to everyone, because we preachers have to repeat it often, for the reason that the Bible repeats it often. You’ll find it all through the Bible, and what you find all through the Bible, it is only common sense that we preachers should keep repeating all the time, even though we may be accused of being repetitious, and that is the value of water.
It’s old familiar truth that three-fourths of the earth’s surface is covered with water, and that 70% of the human body is water, and that there is a large water content in our food, and that without water there could be no birth, no growth, no digestion, no cleansing, no plants, no animals, no life, no atmosphere. And that if we were to take away water from the face of the earth, this globe now that we call our familiar earth would be little more than a parched and ghastly death’s head flying endlessly and meaninglessly through space.
But not only are the scientists interested in this, but the plain man, the farmer. Every farmer knows that water is necessary. I used to see my father when a great heavy snow would fall, a great heavy, thick snow, and fall on the wheat and rye fields and snow them under with several inches and lie there through long weeks.
My father would shrug his shoulders, and every once in a while, express his thanks to nobody in particular, but how glad he was for this great heavy snow. Being a boy, I thought that that wheat and rye there under the heavy blanket of snow would probably freeze to death and that would be the end of it. My father knew better. He knew that if you’re going to have a good spring crop, you’re going to have to have heavy snow, because the snow not only keep the ground warm, believe it or not, but their slow melting in the spring give exactly the moisture needed.
And every farmer knows how precious water is. Go into the south land down in what they call the valley down around McAllen, Texas, and other parts of the south, certain other parts, and you will find those waterless plains irrigated. They have the great pipes there and the great pumps and the deep ditches, and they will pour, at given intervals, water in. And our oranges are brought that way, brought to fruition that way, and much, much other fruit and many other vegetables.
The farmer knows that without water he can only have futility and emptiness, that nothing will ever come to fruition. And the herdsman knows it, knows that unless he has a place for his cattle to water, that he cannot possibly use the grazing grounds.
And the traveler who travels must have water, and to go into the desert without a supply of water and without a guide means to invite death, would be the simplest, not the most painless, but the simplest possible way to commit suicide, would be to start out across the Sahara or any other of the great deserts of the world without a guide and without sufficient water.
Now, thus water becomes precious, as precious as our blood of which it is a large part. And either it’s water as a fatal necessity or it’s a quick and speechless death. Strange thing, nobody dies crying for water, because by the time the poor victim has arrived at that place where death is within minutes, he can’t cry for water. His swollen tongue and cracked lips and dry mouth will not form the word. So without water, it is not only death, but it’s a speechless death, a death that can’t even cry.
So, when God would give us a true and adequate figure to express salvation, He said, I will give you water. You’ll find it throughout all the Bible. You will find it in figures of speech. You will find it in invitations. You will find it in poetry. You will find it throughout the whole Bible, closing with that last chapter where the Spirit and the Bride say, Come and whosoever will, let him come and take of the water of life freely. So, this teaches us that water is as necessary to our inner man as it is to our outer man. There are those who are very much concerned with the outer man.
We have a lot of evangelists now traveling up and down the country known as healing evangelists, and they capitalize on the preoccupation that people have in their outer man. Of course, I don’t mean they don’t preach salvation too, but I mean that the emphasis falls upon the body. You can get evidence that somebody’s body has been helped, why God’s really been working.
Brethren, that body of yours is one of the least important things you have, now believe it or not. That body of yours is the outer tabernacle, but there’s an inner man. And Paul was willing to let the outer man die a little at a time in order that the inner man might be renewed.
You and I ought to throw the emphasis where God throws it. All through the Bible, God looks after the inner man. That is not to say that He’s not concerned with the outer man, for He is. It even says in one place, the Lord is for the body. You remember that? As well as the body for the Lord.
So, there is Scripture, and a lot of it, that teaches that God is concerned with our body. This is not in any wise to say that we should not pray for our healing when we’re sick. It is only to say that if we become too physical in our outlook and too body-minded, we put the emphasis in the wrong place. God is not so much concerned with the outer man as He is with the inner man. So, He gives us water, the sweet waters, the soft flowing water of Shiloah, the water of tranquility and peace, and He gives it to the inner man.
Have you ever stopped to consider your inner man? I suppose there never was a time, and I want to be cautious here, because I know preachers have a certain ministerial immunity, and they can make statements there’s not a word of truth in, exaggerate, and nobody dares call their hand because everybody respects the pulpit. I don’t want to take advantage of that.
If I exaggerate, I want you to come up and tell me so, because I want to be a realist and stick by facts. But I suppose there never was a in the history of the world when there was more interest being taken in the human body. If you don’t believe me, go home if you have one, and I’m sure you’ll do a magazine and flip it open. And there’s not one thing in there about your soul, not one thing about your spirit, but everything about your body; everything, how you can fix your body up.
And there are those in the beauty of their youth, say from 15, well we won’t put a ceiling on it because everybody around that would feel bad, but there’s a period in there when the human body’s quite something. The pains and troubles are at a minimum, the strength and energy and beauty are maximum both for men and women, and it’s quite something.
Well, the world is waxing fat and rich on our great love for our bodies. I think when I see how they groom the human body, I think of these stock shows where they bring in Julius the first, an Angus bull, and brush his teeth, actually brush his teeth. Every day they brush his teeth. They curl his forehead carefully just like a young fellow curling himself up to go to see his girl. And they brush them and groom them, I mean and take such care of them and watch their weight in order to exhibit them.
Is that all there is to it, brothers and sisters? Is that it? Is that what we’re here for in the world, to look after that outer man? Why, you couldn’t sell yourself for as much as Julius was sold for. Fifteen, was it sixteen thousand, some hundred dollars? Couldn’t do it.
And yet here we are preoccupied with our outer man, and the world is busy with the outer man. Whereas one of the least important things, I repeat, that you have is your outer man. It is the inner man that matters, for the outer man must perish and go back to the elements from which it was taken. But the inner man lives on when the outer man can’t move.
We laid away last week, Wednesday, an outer man, the shell of a woman that had walked among us for twenty some years, Mary Hoffman. But nobody that looked at that little cold body there ever dreamed that was Mary Hoffman. She’s gone. There’s an inner man. You’ll find that in the Scriptures all the way through.
Jacob said, I go down on this sheol mourning for my son, and yet Jacob was buried naked, you can tell where his body was. What did he mean? I go down. Jacob didn’t say I and mean his body, Jacob said I and he meant his inner man.
And Jesus said, Father, into Thy hand I commit my spirit. And they laid His body in the grave, and it was there three days. But His spirit, His inner man, was committed unto the Father.
And Judas, it is said, went unto his own place. Yet we know what happened to his body. It was buried somewhere, but he went to his own place. There was a Judas apart from his body. There was a Jesus apart from His body. There was a Jacob apart from his body.
And there was Dives, the rich man, who lifted up his eyes. He couldn’t have lifted up his eyes in hell if he’d meant his body, because his body was buried over there. It said the rich man died and was buried. He had a big funeral commensurate with his widow’s ability to pay.
But yet he lifted up his eyes, and his body was up on the surface of the earth somewhere buried in the grave. What was it? His eyes. Ah, it was the eyes of the inner man. And Lazarus rested in Abraham’s bosom. Was it Lazarus’s poor body whose sores the dogs had licked? No. Lazarus’s body was lying someplace in a potter’s field, for he was a pauper, and of course they buried him in a potter’s field.
But Lazarus was leaning back in the arms of old Father Abraham. Was it Abraham’s body that was there in paradise? No, for Abraham’s body was lying in the cave of Machpelah, and the mold and the dust of centuries were resting upon that body. But the real Abraham was there in paradise, and the real Lazarus went to the real Abraham.
Brothers and sisters, there is a sense in which you and I will never know each other until we shuck off this old temple of deception. There is a sense in which you and I will never know each other, I say, because there’s a sense in which our body veil us from each other. We don’t quite know. We shake a hand, look at a face, and we’re more or less influenced by the face or the hand. But that influence is a physical thing, and the real you, the inner man, is beyond all that and deeper than all that and past all that.
And when Jesus Christ came into the world, let’s not think for a minute that He merely came to bring peace so there would be not war in the world, nor that He came merely to give prosperity to people’s bodies so we could eat more and sleep in softer beds and live in finer homes. No, Jesus came in order that our spirits might prosper, that our inner man, the eternal part of us, might prosper.
And so precious was that water that Jesus Christ died to open that fountain. Not only the fountain to cleanse us, that was the fountain of His own blood. But the water and the blood ran out of His side, and we need the water as much as we need the blood. And when the Spirit of God came down on Pentecost to come into the world to fill the hearts of men, it came as a stream of water on men. Many, many figures show forth the Spirit, and the dove was the one chosen in that holy moment. But elsewhere He’s talked about as rain and water and streams and so on.
Now, what is this water? God offers us the waters of Shiloah, the waters of peace, tranquility, and rest. And let’s ask what it is. Either we know or we don’t. Either this is simply poetry that I’m regaling you with this morning to earn my living, or else there’s reality back of this.
Can you put aside all of the poetry and figure and metaphor and get through to anything you can bite into and say, this is it, and I have it. Yes, thank God. There’s mercy. There is mercy for the guilty conscience. I heard the voice of Jesus say, behold, I freely give the living waters; thirsty one, stoop down and drink and live.
I came to Jesus, and I drank of that life-giving stream. My thirst was quenched, and my what? Soul revived, that’s it, and now I live in Him. Well, there it is. There is the mercy of God. You see, our difficulty now is that we have religion without guilt. And religion without guilt makes a big pal out of God.
But a religion without guilt is a religion that’ll go to hell and plunge everyone there and deceive and destroy at last, everyone. Religion without a consciousness of guilt, my brother, to start with, is a false religion. If I come to Jesus Christ without a consciousness of guilt simply to gain a benefit, woe is me, for so did the Pharisees before me.
But if my guilt drives me to Jesus, then I have my guilt taken from me, and I have mercy. Oh, the mercy of God. We sing about the mercy of God, and I hope we know what we’re singing about.
O Depths of Mercy, can it be that gate was left ajar for me? The good mercy of God. And that’s the water to a thirsty man, the man whose conscious guilt and whose sins are causing him the same anguish that lack of water causes to a traveler. That man can come to the Lord Jesus and drink of the waters of Shiloah, the waters of mercy. My brother, you will never have inward peace until you’ve got rid of your guilt.
Now we might as well get it straight there, because you have a conscience, and your conscience will never let you rest until you get rid of the guilt. Your conscience, if there’s a guilty conscience, it will never let you rest until you get rid of the guilt. It must be taken away, taken away. Oh, you can be smoothed over and given a little theological massage and patted on the head and told that it’s all right, but it won’t work.
I used to know a man by the name of Brother Love. I always thought he had an awfully nice name, Brother Love. He was a converted Catholic, and he had a little sense of humor, though he was basically a very serious man. But he rose in testimony meeting one time and told us this rather terrible but rather humorous thing.
He said, I used to go and make my confession and be granted absolution and told that my sins were pardoned, and I would go out from the church feeling very good that my sins were pardoned. But he said when I began to hear the gospel preached and I met Jesus Christ face to face, I found that every one of those sins came back to haunt me. He said they weren’t forgiven at all. I was only told they were forgiven. Absolution doesn’t forgive, but Jesus Christ forgives.
And then the sin that He’s forgiven never comes back to haunt you, never, never while the world stands, because He beats it back out of being, so it doesn’t exist anymore. Why is it that it says, I will not remember thy guilt? God must remember everything that is, and the only way to figure it is that God must beat it back out of being, so it doesn’t exist. The sin that God pardons and cleanses doesn’t exist anymore. It’s not any longer an entity. It’s gone.
We talk about the covering of our sins, and I know it’s a phrase we use. I suppose I’ll use it myself, but it’s a figure of speech. Sin is not covered. Sin is cleansed. There’s a difference, brethren, between covered sins and cleansed sins. In the Old Testament, they covered them and waited for the Lamb to die on a cross. But in the New Testament, they looked back on a finished job, a work already done, blood already spilt, and they’re not covered now, but they’re cleansed.
And so, there’s the waters of Shiloah. A Christian can have peace. And there’s the water of grace, for it’s all the same water of grace to the poverty-stricken and the bankrupt, spiritually. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ flows like the waters of Shiloah, not the turbulent waters of the Jordan, not the wild overflowing waters of the Mississippi, but the quiet waters that you can get to.
Did you know that a sheep can’t drink running water? Did you know that. A sheep, his nostrils are too close to his mouth, too on a level here. And so, if a sheep starts to drink and the water is moving, he chokes. He’ll drown in the thing. So, they have to dam it up so it stops running. And when it’s no longer moving, it’s still water. Then he can drink it and put his muzzle in and drink away because he doesn’t choke, doesn’t gasp for air.
And when our Lord, or when David wrote about our Lord being our Shepherd, he said, He leadeth me beside the still water. Now, why did he lead them beside the still water? Because running water had bubbles in it and a sheep can’t drink water with bubbles in it. It can only drink the still water, like the water of Shiloah, the water that goes softly. If it moves, it moves so softly that it seems to be still to the sheep.
And so grace is like that. Grace flows out, the grace of God. O Grace of God, how you’ve been wounded in the house of your friends. Grace of God, how you’ve been made into a fetish before which modern men worship. The sweet grace of God, how it’s been used to hide people and cover them. How the grace of God has been preached so that it has damned men instead of saving them. And yet it is here, the grace of God.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. That grace that amazed our forefathers. They were amazed by that grace of God, that sweet, still, smooth water that flowed with a still motion.
You can understand that. So that the poorest, most, the weakest and most helpless sheep can reach his muzzle in and drink and drink and drink. I came to Jesus, and I drank of that life-giving stream, the grace of God.
If God treated you as you deserve, I don’t care how good you are, there’d only be one possible thing for you to do. God would turn an angry face to you in life and turn his back to you in death. And that’s the best person that ever lived and they don’t care who he is. But oh, the grace of God, that God will go beyond our merits, beyond our desserts. That no matter if our sins have been like the mountains, the grace of God like the clouds,
Then there’s forgiveness. I’ve already mentioned it. To the sin conscious, there’s cleansing for the defiled to be cleansed.
When we come in of a summer’s day and we’ve been at work and we’re traveling and we’re just plain dirty with all of the travel of the day, and our pores are stopped up and we just feel bad. A good bath and clean clothes makes you feel like as if you had an education, doesn’t it? It really does. It makes you feel good. Just cleansing is good. It’s good, a garment that is trampled into the dirt and then washed and out in the sun to bleach and then ironed.
Cleansing is a beautiful thing, to be able to cleanse. It’s good that there is a cleansing element in Christianity, a cleansing element. There’s an element of purgation there, that old word purgation. That’s where they get the word purgatory. I believe in the first, but don’t believe in the second. I believe in purgation. There’s a water that cleanses and a blood that cleanses from defilement.
I picked up a magazine somewhere. I don’t remember where now. Yes, it came to the office here Saturday. And on that magazine, it showed four men. One of them was a young preacher preaching his first sermon, 26 years old, and the pastor of that Baptist church in whose pulpit he was preaching, a judge who had sentenced this young preacher to prison and the prosecutor who had prosecuted the case.
So here they had the prosecutor who had shown that this young fellow ought to be in prison and the judge who had sentenced him to prison and the young fellow who was sentenced to prison. There’s one man that wasn’t there. He had a sentence of 199 years, and he won’t be around for a while, obviously.
But while he was in prison, he became converted. And then this young fellow came to prison. And this fellow who was in for as long as he could last, he won this young fellow to Jesus. And the young fellow became a Christian, decided that he wanted to preach the gospel, and as soon as he got out, got ready, and now he’s preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Now, I think that’s a beautiful thing. And here stands the judge that sent him to prison and the prosecutor that argued in favor of sending him to prison, and they’re both having to admit there is a purgation in the blood of the Lamb. There is a power to cleanse and change a man from defilement and make him over.
Why should this thief, this car thief, stand here with a big grin on his face and an open Bible ready to preach the gospel? Because the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin, because there is a fiery purgation in the Christian message that takes a car thief and makes him into a saint. And the man who would not come to hear that ex-thief preach may be guiltier than he and may die under his guilt.
For the wicked fellow who was wicked and admitted it, he’s delivered from it all, and what God has cleansed, call not thou unclean. And I’d rather be preached to by a converted car thief than to be lullabied to death by these educated gentlemen who make Christianity nothing more than a psychology of comfort. Come to church and be comforted. Come to church and be comforted.
I’ve had two people come to me within the last 10 days and tell me that my preaching had cut them to pieces and made them miserable, and in one instance for a long period of time, miserable. I think that’s a beautiful thing, and I thank God I’m unworthy of that.
You people don’t come here to get consolation. If you want consolation, there are lots of preachers that’ll rock you to sleep and say, bye-bye now, and here’s your bottle. You don’t want consolation, brothers and sisters.
You want to know the facts. Where do I stand now before God Almighty? And if I should have a sudden heart attack and go out, where would I go, and where would it be with my soul? That’s what you want to know. You want to know how you can go on to be holy and live holy and go right with God and get rid of sin and live in the Spirit.
That’s what you want to know. You don’t want somebody to give you a Swedish massage and relax you. You want to know the facts. The facts are the blood of Jesus cleanses, and there’s a purgation element in Christianity.
Then there’s the Holy Spirit. The waters of Shiloah, the peaceful waters of Shiloh, they come and they’re peaceful, and they come to the heart. The blessed Spirit of God is the stream that brings us to communion.
Now in the next few minutes, God invites us all this morning, and He invites us to this water. He invites us to the stream, the only perennial stream there is in the world, the only stream that doesn’t run dry, the only stream that never overflows and destroys anybody, the only stream.
And yet the prophet said, oh, I don’t understand. There was a note of incredulity in the text. They refuse the waters of Shiloah. Why, said the prophet, beguiled with amazement. How can it be? Israel refuses the soft waters of Shiloah that God sends out, the healing, tranquilizing stream that brings peace to the heart and conscience. They refuse it, and they turn to reason.
All right, said he in the text, if you choose to turn away from the soft waters of Shiloah, therefore, behold, the Lord bringeth upon you the waters of the river strong and many, and they shall come over all these channels and go over all these banks. If you don’t want the waters of God, then you may have the overflowing torrent of judgement.
There it is, and we must make our choice. But the prophet couldn’t understand. It seems to me that I feel a sense of incredulity, of unbelief. What possessed Israel thus to forsake her own mercy? Why did she turn somewhere else?
Oh, I’ve had people say, I can’t take you. You’re too strict. I can’t take that kind of a strict message. My only apology for preaching a strict message is that I’m not as strict yet as the Bible is. I’m still not up to the Scriptures. I’m trying, but I’m still not as strict.
We had a young man come here some years ago to our place, and he got among our young people, and he was a nice fellow, and everybody liked him, and then he disappeared. And I thought, what’s become of so-and-so? And I asked around.
Well, somebody said he gave his testimony and left. And his testimony was this, I can’t take it at the Alliance Church. You’re just too strict for me. I want to go among young people where I can dance and have a good time, and I can’t take this strict Alliance business.
Well, now could I apologize for that? No. I don’t make it as tough as the Bible makes it. I don’t tell people, you can’t join this church unless you’re ready to turn on father and mother and everything in your life also, but Jesus says it. He says it. He says unless you’re ready to turn from everything and follow Him, you’re not ready to follow Him. And unless you’re ready to die for Him, you’re not ready to live for Him. That’s what the Bible says. I won’t be around. I’m going to face the judgment.
The whistle will blow one of these times, and I’ll have to appear and tell God how I carried on my work. So therefore, I can’t afford to let down. And in order to hold a young fellow who wants to go to hell and still be in a church A young fellow like that, carnal, young, fleshly, buck-loving himself, he’ll come in and play with any young people’s group, because carnality as big as a hunk of mutton sticking out all around him. But he wants to go where he can dance and raise hell like other folks and still be in the church.
What I’d like to know is why do people like that go to church? Boy, I know what I’d do. Oh, if I said to myself, eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we’d die, I know where I’d never show up. I’d never show up at 70th and Union. Never. I’d never show up. And if I ever did, I’d go to the furnace room and stay till it was over. I’d never show up because I wouldn’t go to church at all.
There are only two kinds of preachers, brother, the preachers that preach the truth, and thank God there are lots of them, and the ones that don’t preach the truth. And the ones that preach the truth will tell you you’ve got to be separated to be a Christian, and the ones that don’t preach the truth I wouldn’t respect not to listen to.
So, I wouldn’t listen to either kind. If I want to imagine an old boy like me saying, eat, drink, and be merry, tomorrow I’d die, I’m going to go out and get drunk, or have myself a time, I wouldn’t go to a gospel church where a man preached the truth because he would cut me to pieces, and I wouldn’t go and be comforted by some traitor because I wouldn’t respect him.
So I’d just duck the church and be out of it. I’d do like our old dog did. He had an old brown dog named Mack. He got old, and he was a great fighter, greatest fighter in all around Clearfield County thereabout. But he got old, and he was licked one time soundly, chewed to pieces, and almost killed by a young dog named Jack, Jack and Mack. Jack came out on top.
Well, old Mack was pretty smart, and he knew that his fighting days were over. So when he’d walk down the road near where Jack lived, he’d slip off into the woods and make a little circle and then come back onto the road about a quarter of a mile down. He wasn’t afraid, but there was just no use getting chewed up again.
And that’s exactly what I would do in the church of Jesus. If I was going to look for the devil, I would give it a right berth, as they say, and when I saw a church coming up, I’d cross the street and hurry by. And yet they’re doing it, they’re doing it, the waters of Siloah, the blood of Jesus Christ, the cleansing power of God, the sweet inflowing of the Holy Ghost, and yet people don’t want it. They don’t want that; they want something else altogether.
And there was a day when you had to take your choice, either take the world or take the church. But amazing wonder in these last days, we have now succeeded so with our selfishness and our casuistry, we have now succeeded in fundamental circles of enabling people to take both, telling them they’re saved because they’ve accepted Jesus. So, we can now have the world and the church both. We think that you can. It’s either the waters of Shiloah or it’s the torrential overflowing stream of judgment.
And which will it be, how odd, how strange, how wonderful, how terrible, that men should refuse the waters that go softly from the throne of God, that brings peace and inner tranquility, that gives water to the inner man and satisfy themselves with the dirty, brackish streams of the world. But one of these times they are going to pile up like the angry Jordan and overflow all its banks, and we’re going to be swept away.
Floods are terrible things, brethren, floods are terrible things. Out in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, those three states were hit by those floods, you remember? Addie Anderson, one of the writers, now retired, at that time retired, the treasurer of our Alliance Church in Brooklyn and his wife, were at some summer convention. And those three perished. The waters suddenly overflowed. There they found themselves surrounded, and before they could get to high ground, the roaring, crashing waters swept down and carried them away to death. They found their bodies buried in silt.
Later on, they reverently took them out and washed them and dressed them as being erstwhile temples of the Holy Ghost and laid aside the treasurer of our Brooklyn Alliance Church with his wife and by their side Miss Anderson, the aged Sunday school writer who’d worked for the Alliance for so many years. That’s what a flood will do. Not only those three, but many, many others as you know perished too.
Floods will destroy cities, and the Lord says, I give you the water that goes softly. I give you the peaceful waters of forgiveness and cleansing and deliverance. I give you those waters, stoop down little sheep and drink. But if you won’t, if you won’t, if you turn away and refuse, then I’ll release the watersheds, and down will flow the roaring brackish waters and sweep you away, and it’s coming. God knows it’s coming.
And men are afraid. They come back flying back from Europe or from Asia, and they come back and go in and secretly talk to the president about the terrible dangers that lie ahead. You can’t flip your radio to any responsible commentator anywhere, but saying about the same as the other, there’s danger ahead. They can’t even, little old Israel can’t even go back and inhabit the Holy Land without getting a chip on her shoulder and getting her hackles up and threatening to fight. War and rumors of war and dangers everywhere.
One of these days, God Almighty will snap a button and turn his back. I think he can’t bear to watch and let the waters of judgment sweep over the world. In the meantime, all those who have first previously accepted his peaceful waters by the blood of Jesus, they’ll be safe, and they’ll be all right.
Are you among them? You don’t have to be good; you only have to be willing to be good, and the blood of Jesus Christ will make you clean, and the Spirit will come and make you good. You don’t have to have had a pure and perfect life; you only have to have a willingness to know Jesus Christ and He’ll take care of that. He’ll make you clean. He’ll wash you.
How about it this morning? It’s getting near to the end of 1955, and you promised your member last year at the beginning what you’d do and how you’d live and you haven’t done it. How about it now? Why don’t we get straightened out? This people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly and they’ve chosen Rezin and Remaliah’s son, they’ve chosen the world and the pleasures of the world.
Oh, the Jordan, the waters shall overflow their banks. Don’t risk it, don’t risk it. Come while it’s possible. The invitation is still up. The Spirit and the bride say come. And whosoever will, let him come. And let him take of the waters of life freely. Now we have some adverbs and adjectives in there. Take of the water of life, that’s the kind of water it is. Now how do you get it? Freely. Take of the water of life freely.
So, while we bow our heads in a moment of prayer, you just turn your thoughts up to God and say, Father, I’ve been a fool and I’ve been selfish and I’ve been carnal and I’ve been stubborn, but I’m not going to make the final strategic mistake of refusing the waters of Shiloah. I’m going to take the water that Jesus gives now.
I pray thee, Lord Jesus, to bless these friends. The time is rolling on unceasingly, it never stops. The power is never turned off. Never is there a turning backward. Never is there the reliving of one day twice, nor one hour twice.
We’re moving on, Lord. Nature and time are beating us out. Our bodies are soon to perish like the grass and be cut off. But our inner man, our inner man, our “I” is waiting there.
O Lord, we pray we may take care of our inner man. We pray that that which we variously call our spirit, our soul, our inner man, may come to know the cleansing and purifying waters, that we may be clean and right and good and ready for life or death.
Bless these who’ve listened this morning. Turn their thoughts toward Thee. Make us spiritual people who worship God in spirit and in truth. Save us, Father, from outward things.
Save us from the inartistic, bizarre, crass spirit of Christmas. We see all around about us great glaring chunks of green and red. O God, and hoarse, out of focus, horn bellowing out, silent night, holy night. All this is exceedingly offensive to the child of God who has an inner life.
We pray Thee, save us from getting caught in the world and feed our inner lives. For Jesus’ sake, amen.