English Version
Jer. 17:7-8 "Blessed is the man who trusts in Jehovah and whose trust Jehovah
is. And he will be like a tree transplanted beside water, which sends out
its roots by a stream, and will not be afraid when heat comes; for its leaves
remain flourishing, and it will not be anxious in the year of drought and
will not cease to bear fruit."
God’s economy is to dispense Himself as the living water to produce
His increase, His enlargement, to be His expression. This thought is developed
in the writings of John. In John 1:1 and 14 we see that the Word, which
was God, became flesh, full of grace and reality. Verse 16 goes on to say,
“For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.” In chapter
4 of John the Lord Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman concerning living
water (vv. 10, 14). In John 7:38 He said, “He who believes into Me, as the
Scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.
” In Revelation 21 and 22 we have a vision of the New Jerusalem, which is
a great sign of God’s increase for His expression. Revelation 22:1 and 2
show us that in the New Jerusalem the river of life flows and that in this
river grows the tree of life as the life supply to support and sustain the
entire city. What we have in the writings of John is surely the growth of
the seed sown in Jeremiah 2:13. (Life-study of Jeremiah, p. 18)
This thought is strengthened by Paul’s writings. For example, 1 Corinthians
12:13 says, “In one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body...and were
all given to drink one Spirit.” To be baptized in the Spirit is to get into
the Spirit and to be lost in Him; to drink the Spirit is to take the Spirit
in and to have our being saturated with Him. In 1 Corinthians 10:3 and 4
Paul, using the Old Testament types, speaks not only of drinking but also
of eating. “All ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual
drink; for they drank of a spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock
was Christ.” The spiritual food refers to manna (Exo. 16:14-18), typifying
Christ as our daily life supply; the spiritual drink refers to the living
water that flowed out of the cleft rock (Exo. 17:6), typifying the Spirit,
who flowed out of the crucified and resurrected Christ as our all-inclusive
drink. Our drinking of God as the living water is for the church as His
increase; our drinking is for the producing of His enlargement, His fullness,
for His expression.
Adam fell by forsaking the tree of life and turning to another tree─
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Israel fell by forsaking God
as the fountain of living waters and turning to a source other than God.
This source is signified by the cisterns, which Israel labored to hew out
for themselves.
God was burdened that Israel would drink Him to become His increase
as His fullness that they might express Him. Israel should have drunk of
God as the fountain of living waters, but instead they committed two evils.
The first evil was to forsake God; the second evil was to hew out cisterns
as another source. Those cisterns, however, were broken and could hold no
water. This indicates that apart from God as the fountain of living waters,
nothing can quench our thirst, nothing can satisfy us. Nothing apart from
God Himself dispensed into us as living water can make us His increase for
His expression.
Both those who were for Jeremiah and those who were against him were
kept away from God’s dispensing. They were distracted from Him as the fountain
of living waters (Jer. 2:13). Distractions are the devil’s devices to keep
God’s people from receiving the divine dispensing. God’s intention is to
be everything to His chosen people that they may trust in Him and rely on
Him for everything. If they do this, they will receive God’s dispensing.
The only way to take God as the fountain of living waters is to drink
of Him day by day. By drinking we take into us the living water that issues
from God as the fountain. (Life-study of Jeremiah, pp. 18-19, 158, 259)
Further Reading: Life-study of Jeremiah, msgs. 4, 6, 12, 22
