The river Ezekiel describes (Ezek 47:1-12) is a river of abundant, teeming life. It’s a place where life can grow and healing can occur. As such, it is a picture of the overflowing life that God offers us.

Many of us live life with God added on as an afterthought. We want a comfortable, safe God who will do whatever we want, whenever we want, and who will not make demands of us. The God of the Bible is not like this. He is a wild, wild river. His love is like a raging sea. Rich Mullins wrote about a ‘wildness in God’s mercy’ and ‘the reckless raging fury/ That they call the love of God.’ (‘The Love of God’) When we read the Bible, we see a God who is jealous for us, who is passionate, a God who is able to do miracles and who speaks to people and uses them in ways that cannot be explained away by science or reason. He is a God whose heart yearns for people who will not draw back from Him, but who will plunge into the water and swim with Him.

We need more of God. We need Him to fill us up and send us out. We need to be broken by God so that we take off our own clothes, our ways of ‘doing God’ and let Him lead us afresh into deep water, where we swim in life-giving, thirst-quenching, Spirit-filled water and as we do that, in the power of God’s Spirit, bring abundant fruit into the lives of those who desperately need Him. Religion is not the answer. God as a convenient extra is not the answer. But God Himself, the spring of living water, is.

Learning to swim is a skill most of us acquire in childhood. It’s not easy: having mastered the skill of walking, we have to, in essence, learn a completely different way of moving in water, because water is a very different medium to terra firma. Legs and arms have to be coordinated in movements that are very different to walking and we have to learn to trust the water to keep us afloat, learn how to breathe differently (or we end up choking and swallowing water!) and learn how to tread water and float for the times when we have to rest. Learning to swim in the safety of a swimming pool is different to swimming in rivers or the sea, where currents and tides all affect our abilities.

When I was learning to swim as a child, I used to practise at home, balancing on a dining-room chair and desperately trying to master the ‘frogs’ legs’ needed for breaststroke. I found that no matter how hard I practised, I could not actually swim unless I entered the water.

So often, we are afraid to enter the river of God, afraid of the living water He provides. We hold back, believing that God can speak to other people, but not to us, believing that He can work miracles through other people, but not through us. We hold back out of fear: fear of getting it wrong, fear of failure, fear of other people’s ridicule and scorn, fear of looking foolish. Yet God calls us, like Peter, out onto the sea, to put off our old self and put on the new clothes He provides (see Eph 4:22-24, Col 3:8-10). He calls us to a radically different way of living. Living by faith means learning to swim in the river of God; living by sight means walking with the earth firmly beneath our feet.

As we take in God’s mercy and love and revel in His forgiveness and goodness, as we learn to be buoyed up by His presence with us in the everyday routines of life as well as in the highs and lows of emergencies and celebrations, we find that we are then in a position to give those things out to others. We are enabled, by the living water God’s Holy Spirit has brought into our lives, to minister to others. Phil Wickham has captured this idea far more poetically than I can. In his song, ‘Wild River’, he reminds us that ‘there is a fountain that never runs dry, forever flows with water of life.’ He reminds us, straight from the verses in Ezekiel 47, that ‘where Your river runs, everything lives’ and ‘where Your river goes, we’ll never thirst again.’ He talks about being swept away in the limitless ocean of God’s grace, about drawing from the well of God’s goodness and drinking from the water of life. But he also reminds us that the consequence of this is ‘Your grace, like a flood, pouring out of me.’  Grace. Not retaliation. Not anger. Not selfishness. Not the old self. The new life, with God’s character manifest in us. Grace pouring out of us, because grace has been poured into us. We swim; we draw from the wells of salvation, because Christ has made this new life possible through His death and resurrection. All we have to do is plunge in to His life.

Tonight’s sermon, continuing the ‘Wells of Salvation’ series, looked at Ezekiel 47:1-12, and the river of God. This river leads to abundant life, with plants, fruit and fish flourishing all year round (Ezek 47:9-10,12) and is a symbol of the abundant life Jesus promised us. (John 10:10) This abundant life is not about material possessions or temporal happiness, but is connected to God, the spring of all living water and originator of life (see also John 17:3). Abundant life is not found in pleasure or entertainment, in relationships or sex, in sport or other hobbies, but in God, who loves to give us good and perfect gifts. (Ps 84:11, Js 1:17)

In order to receive this abundant life, Ezekiel talks of water flowing from the temple of God (symbolising His presence.) The water is described initially as trickling, then as ankle-deep, knee-deep, waist-deep and finally too deep to walk through.

So often, we are like the toddler who enjoys paddling: we like getting our feet wet, but also like to retreat to the safety of the shore. At first, grace seems endlessly exciting and wonderful, but living by faith is a risky business and we are more familiar with doing things our own way. This is what happened to the Galatians. Paul says, ‘After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?’ (Gal 3:3) 

While ever we are in water that is ankle-deep, knee-deep or waist-deep, we are in control, our feet still rooted on the ground. God wants us to plunge into the wild, wild river and learn to swim, learning to live by faith and not by sight. (2 Cor 5:7)

Learning to swim is not easy, for it involves a new way of movement, learning to trust the water and cooperate with it instead of resisting it and insisting on moving as we would on land. But if we want to move in spiritual realms and see the miraculous happen, we have to stop doing things our way and live in the Spirit, being people who have turned our backs on our own ways of doing things in order to embrace God’s (see Eph 4:22-24). There is so much more of God to discover and explore. Let’s learn to swim in His river and trust Him to lead us, guide us and direct us in the ways of the Bible, so we see the miraculous happen and experience the power of God in our everyday lives.

We all have different temperaments: some of us are so phlegmatic and laid-back that it’s hard to tell if we’re happy or sad, angry or calm (a little bit like the uniform a Storm Trooper wears, giving no indication of mood!)

Others are as volatile as a rocket, losing their tempers easily over the slightest thing, but whatever our temperament, we all have to deal with the issue of anger at some point in our lives.

Moses faced this issue in Ex 32:1-24. While he was receiving the Ten Commandments and instructions from God on how to live and serve Him, the people of Israel and Aaron were making a golden calf to worship. God’s anger burned against the Israelites because of their unfaithfulness and sin, but Moses intervened and interceded for them. When he returned to the people and saw what they had done, it was as if God’s red-hot anger was transferred to him (and he smashed the tablets on which God had written the Ten Commandments.) Sometimes we are angry as God is angry, but all too often, our anger is fuelled by personal pride or hurt. Paul and Barnabas had such a sharp disagreement over John Mark’s reliability that they parted company (Acts 15:36-39). Compromise was not reached in this situation.

In Eph 4:25-32, we are warned not to sin in our anger and then urged to get rid of all rage and anger. This may seem contradictory, but we have to understand the different kinds of anger there can be.

Anger that is controlled is like the fire that powers our central heating boilers or powers our cars. Controlled anger can achieve positive things; uncontrolled anger – like uncontrolled fire – can have devastating consequences. We need to ask if our anger is constructive or consuming.

The source of our anger is also important. James 1:19-20 reminds us that we need to be slow to anger and that man’s anger rarely achieves righteous results. So often, we have to ask ourselves why we are angry. If it is simply because we are wounded or caring about our own honour, we need to be quick to let go of the anger and forgive. Moses’ anger was righteous because he cared more about God’s honour than his own.

The result of our anger is also worth considering. When Moses was angry, a nation was spared. When Paul and Barnabas were angry, a relationship was broken which took years to mend. So often, we have to be careful not to sin in our anger, lashing out indiscriminately and tearing people down, but we also need to be prepared to feel the anger God feels and to care about His glory.

While we wait for the official photographs of the wedding from Alan, here are a few to whet your appetite! Our very best wishes and congratulations to Mr & Mrs Foreman whose wedding we celebrated at church yesterday. Our prayers for a long and happy marriage go with you.

Our thanks to church members who provided an amazing buffet for the reception held here and who tirelessly worked to clean and set up beforehand and who stayed behind after the ceremony to set everything ‘back to normal’ for today’s services. Your help is very much appreciated. Thanks to Chappell2venues who transformed the community room through their tablecloths, chair covers and other accessories. Most of all, we thank God for His gift of marriage and pray for James and Jade as they set forth on this new adventure.

Today, as we celebrate the wedding of James and Jade at our church, our thoughts are inevitably concentrated on love. ‘Love and marriage… go together like a horse and carriage‘, the old song says, but in our modern society, that is sadly not true. Moreoever, our views of love are often very romanticised and not founded in reality or in truth.

The Bible affirms that God is love, and therefore all true love is rooted in Him. Marriage is His idea, giving love the security and stability of a covenant, founded on promises (vows) freely given. Love has many facets, however. It’s seen in the excitement of a wedding, but it’s seen also in the pain of the delivery of a child. It’s seen in the joy of celebration, but also in the grief at the graveside when we mourn the loss of a loved one. Love is not always plain sailing; there are storms to navigate in any marriage.

Michael TImmis talks about the different facets of love as he considers the fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:2-23: ‘Joy is love rejoicing; peace is love at rest; patience is love waiting; kindness is love interacting; goodness is love initiating; faithfulness is love keeping its word; gentleness is love sympathising and self-control is love resisting temptation.” Our love needs to be infused with God’s love if it is to have these enduring qualities.