LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
Two Forms of Irrigation
“For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables. But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven” (Deut. 11:10-11).
In these verses, God compares the land of Egypt to that of Canaan in a very significant aspect: the provision of water for the fields. The Jews in Egypt had to till the land according to the system of irrigation canals coming from the Nile River. In Canaan, they would learn the provision of rainfall.
Water had two very different sources: the Nile, and the sky. The farmers had to, in the first case, use their foot; in the second, nothing... except to wait on God. In Egypt you had to look at the ground; in Canaan we had to look to the sky. Spiritually, these two forms of irrigation speak very clearly to us about two forms of sustenance. The first is the usual way in the world, and rests on human ingenuity, on the work of man. The second is the form that God has provided for his people, and it is a tacit declaration of dependence on him, on his resources.
The first thing is, from the human point of view, easier and safer, because it depends absolutely on us. The second makes us depend on God, on his mercy every day. In Egypt, Israel could obtain bread with some certainty because it depended on them, without their spiritual condition affecting them. In Canaan, Israel was to stand on the plane of obedience to God. If there was disobedience, rains could be scarce.
On many occasions, God punished the people through drought. The prophet Amos, in the days of Uzziah and Jeroboam, spoke thus on behalf of God: “I also withheld rain from you when the harvest was still three months away. I sent rain on one town, but withheld it from another. One field had rain; another had none and dried up. People staggered from town to town for water but did not get enough to drink, yet you have not returned to me”, declares the Lord (Amos 4:7-8).
Through Haggai, God was even clearer: “You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?”, declares the Lord Almighty. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with your own house. Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the olive oil and everything else the ground produces, on people and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands” (Haggai 1:9-11).
The rain provisions offered God the possibility of having short accounts with his people. They could not neglect their spiritual state, for it would result in their material state. What is our own condition? Are we in Egypt or Canaan? What is the source of our water? Being in Egypt is easier for the flesh, but it is unspeakably torturous for the spirit. To be in Canaan is to drink from the waters of heaven, in the abundance and freshness of life that does not wither.