Communion Message
(Still waters)
September 8, 2002
Pastor Leighton Sheley

These last number of weeks our pastor has been revealing to us the treasures that are found in Psalm 23, so as part of our communion devotional today let's all read together the words of Psalm 23. They are projected to either side. Reading together:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; My cup overflows.
Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

This week as I was thinking about this Psalm that we were going to be studying further today, the second part of verse two struck me -- he leads me beside the quiet waters. In some translations it's the streams, quiet streams.

My mind traversed back a number of years when I joined with some of the men of our congregation for a hunting expedition in the high Sierra. We went up by horseback. It took six hours on the back of a horse to get where we were going. It was that far back into the mountains. It was a box canyon called Second Recess. We had surrounding us on three sides virtual cliffs of mountain rising steep and they were filled with shale. Some of that shale was so large it was the size of a bus. You could stand on it and rock it. It was very unstable. And right through the middle of this box valley was this beautiful stream that flowed, and in the stream were trout. And if there was anything living in that valley it was getting its life from that particular stream.

I thought about that in contrast with the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is actually fed by the Jordan, and the Jordan is written about many times in the Scriptures. It's a source of life for the people who live in that area. It is the source of nourishment for the crops as well as the towns, and so forth. And yet, the Jordan, when it has completed its flow, it ends up in the Dead Sea.

Now why is it called that? Well it's called that because the water has no place to flow. It doesn't flow out; it only gets evaporated out, and so it's a place that stinks, it's a place that's putrid, it's a place of death and decay because it is not experiencing a flow of water, a stream of water, living water.

I was thinking back to something I heard -- do you remember the movie Lawrence of Arabia? I've been told that was based on a true story. And when the actual events happen they brought together these Bedouin nomads who measured their wealth not in terms of gold or land, but in terms of water. They were brought together in one of the developed cities in order to have this meeting, and the hotels in which they were being kept began complaining that the faucets were disappearing.

Now what was happening is these nomads, they came to the city and they came into these hotels instead of their tents, and they would go to a wall and they were shown how you just turn a little knob and all the water that you want would flow out of this thing. So they decided they were going to unhook the faucets and take them home.

Now all of that ties together in this regard -- I think that some of us need a fresh flow of God's Holy Spirit in our lives. We need to know what it is that's constricting that. The Scriptures indicate that sin quenches the flow of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus said these words on the last and greatest day of the feast: Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, if anyone is thirsty let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scriptures have said, streams of living water will flow from within him; by this He meant the Spirit whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. So we desire that the flow of the Holy Spirit not be quenched in our lives by sin, and this is our opportunity to come together around the Lord's table to confess our sin, to receive His forgiveness and His cleansing.

The Scriptures say at times like these we should examine ourselves, and so I'd like to invite you to join with me now as we kneel in the presence of our Lord and Savior.

Lord, you said that the river of life is Your Holy Spirit. Your word declares that sin can quenched the flow of that Spirit in our lives. Lord we they don't desire to be a dead sea. We want to be a source of living water. We want Your Holy Spirit to flow through us. Lord each and every one of us, each and every day of this week, has sinned against You in some fashion, either in thought or word or deed. We're so thankful for Your word which says if we confess our sins You're faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

The elements that we hold remind us that Your word is true, that You're faithful to Your word. They remind us of the price that has been paid for our salvation, for the forgiveness of our sins. So we do not take our redemption lightly. Lord, as we partake, we ask You to forgiveness us and to cleanse us, in Jesus' name. Let's partake of the bread and also the cup.