The significance of the four rivers originating from the Garden of Eden, symbolizing God's provision and the universal reach of His plan. The Pishon river, encompassing Havilah, represents God's glory and redemption through gold, the dalium (manna), and onyx stones, highlighting the richness of salvation. The Gihon river, associated with Ethiopia, signifies Christ's sacrifice for the dark, lost world, emphasizing that only God can change a sinful heart. The Hiddekel river, flowing eastward, points to the swift and imminent return of Christ, urging immediate acceptance of salvation. Finally, the Euphrates river, meaning "bursting forth," symbolizes the fruitfulness of the gospel and the believer's life, and its future drying up in Revelation foreshadows the Battle of Armageddon, ultimately leading to the re-establishment of Eden's glory.
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out to the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And the river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from hence it was parted and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pithon. That is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good.
There is the Dalim, and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihar, the same as it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia, and the name of the third river is Hittical. That is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to flesh it and to keep it. We all will read this morning. We come to this wonderful Garden of Eden.
Well, the word is wonderful to think of God being the gardener, and we have no creative acts in chapter two. We see God creating in chapter one and his six days' work. But he's not creating anything in chapter two. It's remarkable that God planted this garden. Can you conceive of the Almighty planting a garden? But you know it would have a wonderful design, a wonderful variety of flowers. And to think of God planting a garden. When I was in England many years ago, I saw some of the royal gardens and took pictures of them.
But imagine God planting a garden, choosing the plants and the flowers, and planting them in that garden. There'd be no drought in those days, no downpour of rain to spoil that garden because it says in verse six that there was a mist came up, a quiet, gentle mist, and it took care of the plants. You find in the Word of God that this garden is called the Garden of the Lord. You find that in chapter thirteen and verse ten, and also in Isaiah fifty-one, It is called the Garden of the Lord, and also the Garden of God in Ezekiel twenty-eight and also Ezekiel thirty-one.
And so here is God's garden. You have three gardens in Scripture that are outstanding, and there's a man and woman in each one. Here is the first one, the Garden of Eden, and you have Adam and Eve in this garden. sad to say they lost it. We'll say more about that on a future Sunday. Then you have another garden where there's a man and woman, and you'll find it in John nineteen. The man is the Lord Jesus Christ, and the woman is Mary Magdalene. She went to the garden too on the first day of that week, and he was not there.
She saw the angels and they informed her that he was not there. And she turned herself back in the dusk of the morning. She was conscious she was face to face with a personality. And it says she supposing him to be the gardener said, Will you tell me where thou hast laid him? And I will take him away. to imagine a fair woman, willing to carry a man, a mature man with dead weight, willing to pick him up and take him away.
She volunteered, it showed you what love can do. But here you find Mary, and when she said that, his response was Mary. Immediately she recognized that voice and said, Well, won't I? She heard that voice before when he cast out seven devils. She heard it on the resurrection morning, and the resonance of that voice had not changed. Death had not altered the tone of that voice. When he said, Mary, she said, the whomever, there is a man and a woman in the garden, the Savior and the Savior.
Then you have another garden in Scripture, and it's over in Revelation twenty-one and verse one and two. Also in chapter twenty-two, you have a woman in the garden. And in the treasure gardens of deity, in an eternity to come there will be a man and a woman, Christ and the church, the bridegroom, and his bride. All who are saved today will be in that lovely bride in that coming glorious day. And so you find in that last scene, the garden, it's an eternal garden.
No blight, no withering flowers there. The bride and all are glory. The bride grew and all his. It'll be whatever. You'll find in reference to... The home, the first home of Adam and Eve, there are four permanent principles that have to do with life, especially in a home. Those principles are a home to begin with, not a house. I remember one time in Burlington, North Carolina, a lady rolled up each night in a big Cadillac.
She sat and listened and she was the first out. But in a car and drove up. One night she did come forward and said that you might visit him, would like to visit me. I wish you would. She gave me her address, and I did. The next day I pulled up in the front of this lovely home. Wow, it was a beautiful place. I knocked at the door, and as I walked in, I said, this is a lovely home. No. It's no home at all. It used to be. It's only a house now. There'd been domestic trouble by her husband and gone off with another woman.
It's only a house. It's a cold place, a lonely place for me. How nice to think of a home. Where there is fellowship, where there is warmth. That was true in the Garden of Eden at the first. So home is a wonderful principle, and work is the second, and duty is the third, and love is the fourth. These are four principles that God expects of every home. Naturally, only some of these seem to be done by the help of the Holy Spirit of God.
a home. And there are four times in the Bible you read about a river in different places. Here you have a river in a garden. And if you were to turn over to, I think it's Psalm forty-six, you would find a river in a city. There is a river in the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most high. There you have a river in a city. Then you have a river flowing out of the temple in Ezekiel forty-seven, how that river came out of the temple and flowed down, blessing on it, thanks the picture of the coming millennia.
But then again you have a river in connection with that eternal garden we mentioned a while ago. And this is what you read in Revelation twenty-two. and he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out to the throne of God and of the land. In the midst of the street of it on either side of the river was there the tree of life, which bear twelve manner of fruits, and yield her fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were from the healing of the nation. There shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the land shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him, and they shall see his face, and his name shall be in their foreheads.
Here you've got the river associated with a garden, with a shade, with a temple, and with the throne of God. Notice in reading here you find this river branched into four heads, and that's the first time that word, F-O-U-R, is found in the Bible. This river branches out into four heads. I wonder why four? Why not three? We were mentioning something at the worship meeting where the word Trinity could have been used. Three is the number of Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Why four? Four is the number of the universe, north, south, east, west. Here you find this one river beginning in the Garden of Eden, branching out to the whole world. It speaks of Christ in the Gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In Matthew you have Christ the King. In Mark you have Christ the servant. And in Luke you have Christ, the Son of Man, and in John he is the Son of God. Here you have all four of the writers of the gospel. And if you were to compare them, you would get a different slam on the person of Christ.
Some leave things out that others saw. Some people think these are contradictions. No, they're not. If you were uptown and an accident occurred in the middle of that intersection, you stood on one corner and another man stood on this corner, another on this, another on this. Possibly they could enter into an argument. Well, I saw this. I didn't. But you get those four men together and let them all see it from their different perspective. They covered it all. God gives us the full picture of the Son of God. Every perspective, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Then again, the gospel, the Lord Jesus, in talking about the gospel supper, it was for the poor, the maimed, the false, and the blind, and the poor. Also he speaks of those who are for the gospel, who need the gospel, as enemies, ungodly, sinners, and without strength. Remember in the tenth of Acts, A seat was let down at the four corners, and as Peter looked in that seat, he saw four-footed beasts creeping things, clouds of the air, and wild beasts. God says, Peter, the angel, Till and Eve. No, says Peter, I wouldn't touch any of those things.
As a Jew, I couldn't. God giving him a lesson about the Jews' attitude toward the Gentiles who found Christ. God says, don't you call anything unclean that I cleanse. I cleanse those Gentiles with the precious Son and my Son. Don't you call them calm and unclean. There's again the universal aspect of the gospel. Four corners of the sheet and four living creatures in there, in the sheet. Cleanse my precious blood. Then the old saying, red, yellow, black, and white, all are precious in this sight. The red Indian, the yellow Asiatic, the colored black Africans, the white.
The whole human race is embraced. And so this river came into four heads. And you can take the little word, come, C-O-M-E, see children, old, old people. M. Middle East, E. Everyone. How universal the gospel is in God's message and the message of Eden, branched out into four heads. You know, only two of these rivers are on the map today. The first two, Kaizen, Gaihan, and not. Undoubtedly, the flood must have had a lot to do with the way that part of the world is today.
Undoubtedly the flood had a lot to do with rivers, and I believe those rivers, as we read them, were exactly as they are described, because the one who told the story Moses inspired by God was just as true as God created Adam and Eve. So these rivers were what God said they were. They flowed where God says they flowed, and they had the meaning God said they were to have. You know, when you stop to think of this, I have a big world map on my wall, and I was trying to look these up, these rivers.
Well, I couldn't find only one clearly. The second one, Hezekiel, I was able to trace. And if you trace them to their source, you have approximately where the Garden of Eden was. Right today, Euphrates begin up in the southern part of Turkey at a place called Miraz. Then it flows down south and it flows across Iran. It comes to Syria, Iraq to Abadan and over into Iran. And it tells you here it was Assyria.
So the present day Iran is Assyria abode. And that river Euphrates goes down to part of Iran and fades out in a place Shiraz, seventeen hundred miles long. Now if you want to go on a tour and hit the river Euphrates and walk to its source, you'll be in the area of the Garden of Eden. Well, the flood may have messed it up a little, and what the rough flood did in man has, we'll wait till the millennium, and we'll get a good picture of the Garden of Eden in its glory.
Now I want to speak on these rivers. The first one ties on. Did you notice what we read was embraced by that river? It embraced the land of Havala. Pamala means the land of the living. David mentions it twice. Pamala, the land of the living. Heisman embraced the land of the living. What is found there explains this. Gold is found, he says. And it says the gold of that land is good.
The Lord Jesus said, There's only one good that is God. And so the gold here could be figurative easily of God and self. Gold is representative of God and His glory. When you think of the tabernacle, those lovely vessels of gold is the ark, the throne of God, pure gold. There is the golden altar of incense, pure gold. The lampstand, pure gold. The table, pure gold. Everything there in the presence of God was gold. Gold speaks of God and His glory.
That was a land of living. By we see a living God presented. Then you find also something else in that place. It says there was something. The delium. The delium. You know, it's remarkable how the Word of God helps you. The delium was something, a silvery substance. And if you turn over to Numbers chapter eleven and verse seven, you read this. And the manna was as coriander seed and the color thereof as the color of the delium. That's the name of the...
land that was encompassed, that dahlia. There you have the manna referred to. Christ said he was the bread which came down from heaven. He says your father did eat manna. And he said they died. He said I am the living bread. He is the living manna. And here you have it, the gold speaks of God and His glory, the soberly substance. Italian speaks of the redeeming Son of God, who as the bread came down from heaven, he gave it life unto the world. And then you find an onyx stone there.
Oftentimes you'll find in the Bible that deity is explained by precious stone, the onyx stone. Does that not tell us? about the third question of the Trinity, the gold, the battalion, the silver, and the Holy Spirit of God. No wonder it was the land of the living. It's remarkable too when you turn over to First Corinthians three, you find out how God is going to reward his people in that coming day. Gold, silver, precious stone, wood, hay, stubble.
Would hay and stubble is that which is going to be burned up a Christian who's lived his life for this world only? Nothing for God and nothing for eternity just would hay, stubble. Yet God says that person shall be saved even as though by fire, for the fire will try every man's work. And the presence of God will try every man and every woman's work. After you're saved, you're going to appear at the judgment seat of Christ and God will hand out His reward.
Don't forget, friend, only what's done for God. Only what's done for the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit, will be rewarded. Whatever you've done in your life that abides the presence of God, the scrutiny of the eye of God will heal the war. These are lessons from Liber Kaisal. Then you come to the next one, Gaihan. The meaning of Gaihan is strange. It means travel. And you'll notice it compassed the whole land of Ethiopia.
which means black. Looking at the map, it shows there must have been some remarkable changes because Ethiopia is down below Egypt. But this river flowed from its source in the Garden of Eden and it came across those states I've mentioned, the Persian Gulf, even into part of Africa. and it encompassed Ethiopia. We are told that the Ethiopians conquered the Egyptians on Tuesday occasion. Maybe it was under their rule that this river encompassed.
But we know that this river encompassed the whole land of Ethiopia. This poor world is an Ethiopian in the dark. And it says, Traveh. That's what Dihon means, Traveh. And the Lord Jesus Christ, Traveh, as he anticipated the darkness of the cross. He says, Now is my soul troubled me, O what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour, but for this hour came I into the world.
And Jesus Christ on the cross knew something of Pallad's soul trouble, as he thought of the darkness he was going to have to endure for you and me to be saved. Well, he cried out in the darkness when the sun refused to shine. My God, my God, why hast I forsaken thee? Jesus Christ in his death encompassed the whole land of Ethiopia. In other words, his death, his travel, was for the whole dark, dark world. I think it was David Livingston who said, praying in one of his prayers, O God, hand you a message for that dark continent of the human heart.
And that's where he spent his life in Africa. But he likened Africa unto the human heart, isn't it? how dark it is. Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. They are those who don't want the light. They prefer the darkness, but you shall have it. The blackness of darkness forever. There will be soul trouble there, but it shall never be delivered far. How amazing, this river Guy Hawke. You know, when you think of the Ethiopian, there's a remarkable text in your Bible that's in Jeremiah, thirteen, twenty-three.
Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard, his swats? No, it's impossible. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin. Neither can the leopard. When he sees his swats, he can change them. It's absolutely impossible for the Ethiopian to change his skin or the leopard change its spots. That's what God says. And it's absolutely impossible for you to change your heart. God's got to change. You can't.
There's another text in Jeremiah, I think it's . And this is what he says there. For go thou wash thee with Niter, and take thee much so, yet thine iniquity is marked before me, saith the Lord. You cannot in any way change your heart or get rid of that sin which is in your heart. You're helpless, just as helpless as the leopard and the idiot we open. Only God can change your heart.
I visited a man this week. I asked him, when are you going to get saved? He said something, I never heard a man say it in my fifty-one years preaching. He says, I don't know whether I qualify. I said, you sure do qualify. You're lost from going to heaven. You qualify. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost. And God be merciful to me, the sinner, you qualify. And if you admit that, God will save you.
I presume he thought that if he lived a clean life, There are a lot of good deeds that would qualify him for God's salvation. It'll qualify you for hell. You've got to acknowledge you're a lost, guilty sinner, and you can't save yourself. And if you say, Lord, be merciful to me, the sinner, I'm lost, I'm going to hell, you're qualified, and God will save you and not kill you. And so, friend, you're lost. Never mind your clean light, your respectable light, your liberality, your honesty. You're a lost, guilty, hell-deserving sinner.
You're in the very middle of Ethiopia, as God sees. But this river, Peter Kell, it embraces it. And the love of God and the Son of God will embrace your heart. and change. He'll give you a new life, a new nature. That's the message of Gaia. Then the third one is Tidokath. Tidokath! In other words, you'll find it today more or less the Tigris. Tidokath is a strange river.
It's on the east of Assyria and It's a rapid river. It's a swift river. And that's unusual. It's toward the east, the sunrise. It's rapid. It's swift. The Lord Jesus Christ is going to come rapidly. He's coming swiftly. Face the east. And there's where he's come. When the sun of righteousness shall appear. of healing in his wings. The east speaks of the coming of Christ. When the sun sets, it sets in the west.
When the sun comes up, it comes in the east. On this river is toward the east. Rapid, swift. When Jesus Christ comes in judgment, he's going to come rapidly. He's going to come swiftly. What God does, he does quickly. When he saves a soul, he can save that soul in a second. The moment that person acknowledges our loss, God will save them. They'll be no waiting. No week, no month, no year. He'll do it speedily. He'll do it rapidly. And Jesus Christ is coming as sure as the word, as silent as the feet, as sudden as the flood, and as swift as the lightning.
That's how he's going to come. Then it comes and comes. You want to be saved. You can be saved right where you sit. God saved you. Beautiful in it now. How swiftly the Lord Jesus can wash away all your sin. Then you come to Euphrates. This is the first time you find Euphrates in the Bible. The last time is quite solemn. But the meaning of Euphrates is bursting forth. Fruitfulness, sweet. It's a lovely name, isn't it?
Does it mean that in the millennium this lovely river will cause the land to blossom at a low? It'll be a fruitful scene. The millennium will be a lovely scene when Jesus Christ shall reign from sea to sea. from pole to pole. The Euphrates is the northeast boundary of the promised land that God promised to Abraham. You find that over in Genesis fifteen eight. God says that land I'm going to give you is from the Euphrates down to Egypt. God is going to give that land to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, see the Jewish nation.
And we're going to leave Israel out of it and apply it to us today. I want to say this, that this river is going to be dried up in the day to come to allow the kings of the East to sweep down to the Battle of Armageddon. Listen to this in Revelation sixteen. And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates. and the water thereof would dry up that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared. The day is coming when God will dry up that river just like He did with that sea.
Likely the Chinese, the kings of the east, if they anticipate and they drop their eyes on the Middle East, on Israel, And they're the only nation in the world can field an army of two hundred million. And that's the number the revelation said is coming down to the Armageddon, taking all branches of China's armed forces. And that river that means bursting forth. they likely will be planning through their engineers a way to get over that river with their hordes.
God says, don't worry, I'll expedite you of getting over that river in your move beyond again, for that's where I'm going to deal with you. I'll dry that river up. And if you trade the case, the Euphrates, as I mentioned, the southern part of Turkey down to... southern part of Iran, that river will flow there. And that's the barrier, the natural barrier, when China wants to come down to east. Watch it out right now. You know, the river Euphrates has a lovely application to us today.
What does it mean in Ling's bursting forth, fruitfulness? And this could be for you this morning, the Euphrates. Something that has light. It speaks of the gospel. Fruitfulness. The Lord Jesus said to the woman in the fourth of John, Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give them shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. There is the Euphrates. He says in John said, On that last day, that great day of the feast, He said, if any man thirsts let him come unto me and drink, and out of his inward pots will flow rivers.
There be a phrase. A river bringing forth fruit, a river bursting and bubbling with life. Spirit is a life, and Jesus Christ, and make your little heart a better suppose river be taken, bursting with strength, with light, with fruit, and He only can. I would ask you this morning, is your heart a garden or is it a wilderness? The garden of your heart. Is your heart placed where a man lives?
That man is the man Christ Jesus. If so, if he dwells in the garden of your heart, then be a veritable garden of evening. There will be fruit. There will be blessing. A bubbling up joy, my sins will all forget. I'm on the grave of heaven. That can only be possible when Jesus Christ becomes a gardener. In the garden of your heart, be there. What is your life a wilderness? A dry, barren place, weeds, fissile, thorn, briar?
That's where the devil is. And that's where the devil tempted the Lord Jesus in the wilderness. And that's where the devil met his match and was defeated by the Lord Jesus in the wilderness. I'm never likely running in your heart and light this morning, and all you've got to look at, breathe, form, thistle, dryers, barrenness, emptiness. But the Lord Jesus can meet Satan in that barren heart of yours, and he can defeat it.
And instead of those dryers that come up some fruit Lovely fruit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, goodness, faith is yours. This is the lesson of the four rivers in Eden's life. I want, if you see the significance and the application of these lovely rivers, and I think the time coming when Eden will be reestablished, and revict it in revelation do so. The overcomer, God says, I will give unto you the tree of life, which is an immense of the paradise of God.
A lovely garden of peace. George this morning, if you trust the same, I don't know, you only know, who was in your heart this morning when you came here, likely the devil. Remember, if you don't get saved, you're going to share the lake of fire with the devil and the devil. But you can have the occupants in your heart changed with Jesus Christ. He'll be in the garden of your heart this morning. And as Christ is in your heart, it will be Christ-like.
It will be living. There'll be peace, there's a storm, there's a power. What a change. Joining the church won't bring that change of life. Living a life that you think clean life, honest life, respectful life, that won't bring it about. A million dollars couldn't change. But it's only as the Lord Jesus Christ steps into your heart You open the door, you leaven in. He says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I'll come in with you.
He said to him, And be with me. Maybe some of you have heard the approaching footsteps of the Son of God, as the Spirit of God has knocked on your heart, as you've heard the gospel from the spoken. You've heard his approaching footsteps until he stood on the doorstep. and he lost and it was loud as he put it off only to hear the departing footsteps of the son of god until his footsteps came out he put it off the spirit left him now you're no longer in the spirit god forbid that such a thing should happen while you've got your faculty While you can think straight, you open your heart this morning and let the savor in.
Say, Lord Jesus, come in, to the garden of my heart. That's your privilege. I hope you'll let him in. Do it now. Amen. Our Father in heaven, in the name of our Lord Jesus, Christ, we come into thy presence. that thy blessing upon thy holy word thou has left these things in thy word for our admonition and for our benefit and blessing we thank thee for that lovely garden of Eden the blessings which once characterized it and spiritually those blessings have flowed into many hearts may some part open for those blessings that flow in today.
Blessings of peace with God, everlasting life, and the assurance of never-faring sin. Bless thy word to this end, we ask, in our Lord Jesus' precious name. Amen. Shall we sing, in closing, that from in your hymn, three hundred and seventy-three. just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was said for me, that thou didst me come to thee, O man of God. I come. I come. You've heard this many times. Sometimes you've hesitated. You wanted to come, but you haven't.
May it be today the new day. Septuagint, come and tell us. We stand and sit. Just as I am without the faith, God has I done for you before me, and as I have now been Those two will come and tell us, you are saved, you've got to be saved, or you want to be saved.