In the gospel as recorded by John there are several interesting events which seem to be antitypes of events of Old Testament times, and which are not immediately obvious. One cannot but notice John’s references to water and its spiritual meaning. In the first chapter, it is recorded that John the Baptist said, “I baptise with water, but one stands among you whom ye know not”: a very enigmatical statement, taken alone. Later in the same chapter we find John again saying, “He that sent me to baptise with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on Him, the same is He which baptiseth with the Holy Spirit”. Here John the Baptist referring to immersion in water, sees an antitype of an immersion in Spirit. We cannot fail to see that, even as the moment of baptism in water is a moment of isolation from the world, so the immersion in spirit, in its final sense, will be a time of isolation from the weaknesses of mortality. And, even in the immediate sense, a time of immersion in the things of the Spirit (when studying God’s word) is a time of isolation from the affairs of this life.
Time will not allow us to discuss the happenings of the marriage in Cana of Galilee, where Jesus made Readings the water into wine, and symbolically led us from the natural to the spiritual wedding through the blood of redemption, for we feel that chapter 4 and the Samaritan woman have a message for us. Jesus sat on the wall of the well — Jacob’s well near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to Joseph, adjacent to Shechem. This reference to Joseph gives us our link, and we refer back to Jacob’s prophecy concerning his much loved son (Genesis 49. 22.), “Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall. The archers have sorely grieved him and shot at him, and hated him. But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob (from thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel)”.
It does seem that this prophecy and the incident in John belong to one another. Jesus was in the place of Joseph and was truly a fruitful bough by a well. And now the bough reached over the wall, from Israel to the gentiles (represented by the Samaritan woman), offering — what? “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.” Living water—the water of life—”The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” To the woman’s eternal credit, she understood and said to her contemporaries, “Is not this the Christ?” And the bough of the tree of Life still reaches out beyond Israel, to all of the gentiles who will hear.
And now let us glance at chapter seven. It is the feast of tabernacles, the millennial feast—for, as it is written, “Every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem to battle, shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles” (Zech. 14. 16).
“In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” And this provoked many people to say, “Of a truth this is the prophet” (John 7. 37-40).
What prophet? Undoubtedly the prophet like unto Moses, of whom Moses spoke (Deut. 18. 15). And that takes us back in thought to the rock of Horeb, because Moses said to Israel, “The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, like unto me; unto him shall ye hearken; according to all that thou desirest of the Lord thy God in Horeb, in the day of assembly”. So Moses linked the prophet like unto himself with the miracle of the rock in Horeb, and, when Jesus spoke at the feast of tabernacles about Himself giving living water, the people saw the link and proclaimed Him, “the prophet like unto Moses”. What was it that the people had desired of the Lord their God in Horeb? “Give us water, that we may drink.” To them, in their desperate thirst, water was life, and they had said to Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children with thirst?” (Exodus 17. 3).
The link between John 7 and Exodus 17 is a beautiful example of the unity of scripture, with two events coinciding in their import, whilst clearly not a deliberate matching of type with antitype as would occur with a humanly devised document. When Paul wrote that Israel drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ, Paul was deeply aware of Christ as the source of the water of life. And what made the rock so wonderful? Again we turn to Exodus 17 and the words of God to Moses (verse 6), “Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb”. Yes, God was there, unseen, yet making the rock such unlikely material–provide water in the wilderness. So God took hold of human flesh such unlikely material and made it the source of living water. At the feast of tabernacles, the people recognised this. But, like their forerunners in the wilderness, they soon forgot his message and crucified “the rock”, and from his side poured the blood and water (John 19. 34), marking the death of one who had Spirit and mortality together.
Daniel The Prophet – (Part 3)